Confession Is Good For the Soul
by Anna Fugazzi
Summary: Confession may be good for the soul, but Draco learns that it's also hell on the nerves and libido. HPDM, Post Hogwarts, complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Don't own 'em. Probably a good thing.

**Pairing:** HP/DM

**Author Note:** This is the first part of a two-part one-shot (can a one-shot have two parts?) that was written for a fic exchange. Each member of the fic exchange filled out a request (ie what we would & wouldn't like to read), then received another member's wishlist and tried to fill it to the best of our ability.

The links I've provided add nothing to the plot of the story, but they may add a bit of background and help visualization, for those of us who like that kind of thing :)

Thanks so very, very much to my betas, naatz and Caliope Amphora. Any mistakes remaining are solely my responsibility, and if you spot 'em, I'll love you forever.

Oh, and: among the three of us we've got a Canadian, a Brazilian, and an Israeli; nary a Brit to be found. So any Britpicks will be gratefully received :) :)

**Monday**

When did Harry Bloody Potter become so gorgeous? And shaggable? And so very, very clueless?

All right, that last wasn't a valid question, Draco admitted to himself. He'd always been clueless. But the gorgeous and shaggable parts hadn't been there at Hogwarts, Draco was sure of it. They hadn't even been there when he had first started working with Harry last year. Had they?

He blew out his breath in annoyance as Harry and the two clinic mediwitches continued their mindless chatter in the lunch room, conveniently placed right next to his cubicle. Normally he didn't mind the location - Trainee Healers were expected to settle for what office space they could get, and in a clinic this small he was lucky to get anything approaching privacy - but today he'd been trying to write up a report on a batch of defective Farsight Potion for an hour, and hearing the mediwizards avidly discussing last night's match between the Kenmare Kestrels and Montrose Magpies was not helping his concentration at all.

"No, I'm telling you, their Keeper's _really_ good," Harry was saying. "He was just off because of that Bludger he took last match."

"Distracted by yer bonnie ex, he was," one of the women teased.

Harry chuckled. "You don't know Ginny. She's hell-bent on getting the Cup this year; if he let himself get distracted by her, he wouldn't live to see the next match. She's a fair player in the air, but trust me, she's not above playing dirty off the pitch to get what she wants."

The others laughed knowingly and Draco swore under his breath as he blotted the parchment. He tossed out his quill and replaced it with a new one, quickly cleaning the mess.

There was no reason for it, he thought. Harry's new shaggability, that is. He had grown up, of course, and gained some rather nice muscles, but he still had the same messy hair, same scar, same glasses, plus a very slight limp from a knee injury during the war. The atrocious clothing was gone, and there was nothing shudderable about his attire now, but it was still fairly uninspired. It seemed Girl Weasley had worked with him on wardrobe, but not gone much farther than unsquirmworthy before skipping off on him last year.

And Draco was making up far too many words. Not a good sign.

Maybe that's all it was. Maybe Draco was only interested because Harry was single again. And Draco saw him every day, and they worked together, and Draco's training was long and difficult, and he worked in a minuscule clinic on a tiny island in Shetland, and it was only natural that he would start having feelings for the only person he saw on a regular basis who wasn't sick, married, a hundred years old, or a sheep. Perfectly natural that those feelings would start to manifest themselves as embarrassing distraction during the day, and rather lurid dreams at night. And it was a good thing that Harry was clueless, because Draco sure as hell didn't want to damage their working relationship by revealing his inconvenient attraction to the man.

And thank Merlin the business with the Sorting Hat was a one-time thing only, because putting on that dratted thing right now would surely result in the "Only Malfoy Ever Sorted to Hufflepuff," which was not a title Draco had ever aspired to.

He blew his hair off his forehead. He had to finish this damned report before going home, where he belonged. In his own house, his own bedroom, sleeping in his own bed and not in the call room of the clinic the way he had for most of this week.

He wondered idly if Jessica had missed him at all this week. If she'd even noticed he wasn't there.

Of course she had. Cold and distant his wife might be, but she was neither blind nor stupid. She probably didn't care, though.

"Help!" an old woman stumbled out of the Floo, babbling about a splinched grandson, and Draco automatically tuned her out. Regular splinching, nothing life-threatening, a simple mediwizard job that wouldn't require his skills.

"No, it's all right, ma'am, let me get my bag and I'll be right behind you," Harry told the old woman reassuringly. "Happens all the time, he'll be fine." He quickly passed Draco's desk on his way to his own. "Draco, go home," he said absently. "You look like tripe warmed over and Jessica's probably forgotten your name by now."

"You won't need me?" Draco asked.

"For a leg-splinch? Please, I could teach you how to do one of these. In fact, I did teach you, just last month, didn't I?"

"Ha ha. Have fun, and don't forget to share with the rest of us if she gives you a fairyberry pie as thanks."

Harry chuckled, hurrying back to the distraught old woman and following her through to the Floo, and Draco did _not_ turn to watch him leave because he wasn't that pathetic. Yet.

He ran his hand over his hair as the brief excitement died down and the Quidditch conversation picked up again. Lovely. He was no closer to finishing the report, which he really should before tomorrow, but his motivation to work had completely evaporated and he just wanted to leave. Which had nothing to do with wanting to return to his home and decorously falling-apart marriage, and much more to do with the fact it was past quitting time and Harry was most probably going to Apparate straight home after the splinch job.

Draco sighed and put away his report. Tomorrow was soon enough; his supervisor Helga knew how hard he'd been working lately. And hopefully, his darling wife would be off in London again so he could have a Butterbeer, read a good book, and go to sleep without having to deal with her. And without worrying that she'd overhear him talking in his sleep during one of his more... interesting dreams about Harry.

**oooooo**

**Tuesday**

"Draco, did you ever see anything like this when you were at St. Mungo's?" Harry said the next day, resting a hip against Draco's desk and showing him a scroll.

"What is it?" Draco asked, not bothering to put down his Beast Ailment Potions text. "Another botched sheep laxative potion?"

"Curb your enthusiasm, this one's actually interesting. It's from the Sandsay Clinic in Orkney. They think it's a new curse and they can't figure it out."

Draco skimmed Harry's scroll, noting and immediately ignoring the scent of ginger biscuits that Harry seemed to always carry with him. "Patient says she doesn't feel any different?"

"No. She swears she's acting normally and there's nothing wrong with her, but everyone around her is suddenly scared to death of her."

Draco skimmed along farther, gave a low whistle. "Family refusing to be in the same room as her? Ooh, and they got Aurors in too."

"Nearly got her shipped to Azkaban before somebody pointed out she hadn't actually done anything wrong. Apparently the first Auror called in swore she was up to no good, but couldn't pin down what exactly she'd done. Thank god the back-up he called spotted the difficulty, or she'd be warming a cell right now. For no reason."

"And she's otherwise unaffected."

"Feels fine. Other than she can't understand why everybody around her is terrified of her."

"Hm. She's probably just premenstrual," Draco said, and ducked to avoid a flying gob of fairyberry pie.

"Brave man," Harry said dryly, and Draco chuckled.

"Brave or foolish," said Helga. "Good thing I know ye don't mean it, or that pudding would've burst into flame."

"You're just pissed because you ran out of your potion last month," Draco quipped.

"Shut your gob, brat," Helga said gruffly. "Ye're not done your training yet."

Draco smirked at her. "St. Mungo's doesn't appear to care," he said. "I've already been offered a post there when I'm done here."

"That'll thrill Jessica, I'm sure," commented Brian, the other Healer on staff. "More than good old Shetland, anyway. So, no ideas on it? Didn't see anything like it at St. Mungo's during your training?"

"No. Though I didn't spend a lot of time in the Spell Damage wards. You may want to owl them."

"Well, Sandsay's probably sending her there anyway, if they can't figure it out soon. They've been at it for three days with no improvement."

"Harry!" Pepper poked her head in. "Cauldron explosion at Clett Apothecary on Whalsey, you're up!"

"How long were you at St. Mungo's anyway?" asked Brian after Harry had left, taking his ginger biscuit smell with him.

"Ten months," Draco said. _Must remember to buy ginger biscuits next time I go shopping_, he caught himself thinking. Swiftly followed by _You don't even like ginger biscuits_ and _You hopeless twit_.

"Jessica wants to move back to London, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, she does," Draco said absently, still studying the scroll from Sandsay and not thinking of ginger biscuits.

"And you?"

"I'd rather stay here."

"In Shetland?" Brian grimaced. "Whyever for?"

Draco shrugged. "It's a nice enough place. And I get to see a bigger variety of cases; at a larger clinic I'd have to specialize and only ever see one kind of problem."

"Yeah, fascinating variety; half our patients are animals," Brian shook his head, and Draco shrugged again. "God, why would anybody want to be _here_, when they could be _there_?"

Draco glanced at him and raised an eyebrow, and Brian had the grace to look a bit sheepish. It wasn't that nobody at Muckle Roe Clinic knew about him and his past; they just didn't always connect him to the name in the Prophet. Muckle Roe was remote enough that the entire Second Voldemort Rising had been little more than articles in the newspaper to them, and Draco's own role in it not particularly well known. Which was precisely why he had come here. Probably why Harry had come here too; even the Boy Who Lived Twice didn't attract much attention here, except as a Southerner.

Draco still found the irony of it amusing. Muckle Roe had seemed perfect, when he was looking for a place to finish his training. A small clinic with two Healers and three mediwizards, none of whom he knew, and a large but scattered wizarding population who mostly kept to themselves. Almost no contact with Muggles. Far, far away from Wiltshire and London. Hopefully nobody who knew much about him, for good or bad.

Then he'd arrived, and on his first day he'd met the people he was going to be working with fairly closely for the next three years. Chief Healer Helga Smith, Healer Brian Bulstrode (no relation to Millicent; he'd checked), Mediwizards Gwen Sigrudsdattir, Pepper Unst, and Harry...

"Potter," he'd said, keeping his voice even. "The staff list said Evans."

Lovely, he'd thought. Just perfect. And had been pleasantly surprised when Harry merely smiled wryly and said, "Mother's maiden name. I use it on official papers so nobody will track me down, but I still go by Potter in person." He'd held out his hand. "Hello, nice meeting you for the very first time ever."

Draco had laughed, taken off guard, and shaken his hand, and the others had looked at Harry with surprise.

"Ye ken the new lad, then?" Gwen had asked.

"Yeah, I know him. We were in the same year at Hogwarts."

"Old friends?"

"Not exactly," Harry chuckled, but didn't elaborate. "Welcome aboard, Malfoy. How far along are you in your training?"

"I still have three years to go. I didn't know you'd become a mediwizard."

"It's a living," Harry had said easily. "I've been here two years. Which gives me seniority over you, until you're done your training." He grinned. "At which point you can begin acting superior, and I'll probably start looking for another job."

Draco had smiled as the rest of the team welcomed him, evidently deciding that if Harry could tease him, the new lad must be all right. Yes, it had been almost eight years since Hogwarts, they'd been civil to each other the few times they'd been in contact since then, and Draco had been pardoned for his actions before the war and honoured for his work during the war, but it had still been rather generous of Harry to ease Draco's way into the clinic. Once, such magnanimousness would've galled Draco, infuriated him. He'd grown up enough since then to be grateful instead.

And he'd gradually gotten to know Harry as he was now: a competent, dedicated mediwizard, and a pleasant and decent man; nothing like the boorish, angry boy he'd once been. They'd worked well together, and Draco had slowly come to regard him with respect and friendship.

It was just too bloody bad that all this had coincided with him and Jessica cooling towards each other, so that eventually he'd found himself first intrigued, then interested, then inexorably straying into lovesick puppy mode around Harry. Even occasionally seeing him in his dreams. Happily he'd yet to toss off to thoughts of him, because he very carefully kept his thoughts on faceless people. Because the day he was wanking over thoughts of Harry Bloody Potter would be the day he checked himself into St. Mungo's and got to know Gilderoy Lockhart a little better.

Making a mental note to never think of tossing off and Gilderoy Lockhart in the same sentence again, Draco shuddered and buried himself once more in his textbook, trying with all his might to make sheep gestation potions hold his interest.

**oooooo**

**Wednesday**

"Oh my g-"

"Stop - dinna come closer!"

"Wha-"

"STOP!"

"Brian, what th-"

"GET BACK!"

Draco rushed into the Floo room, completely unprepared for the sight that greeted him. Harry, somewhat dusty from the Floo, was holding his wand before him. Ringed around him were Brian, Gwen and Pepper, all pointing their own wands at him menacingly.

"What the _fuck_?" Draco said.

"He's dangerous!" Pepper shouted frantically. "He - keep yer wand on him!"

Draco grabbed his wand and pointed it at Harry. What the hell? Polyjuice, Imperio, what the hell was going on in Middle of Nowhere, Muckle Roe?

"What did he do?" he asked the others, fighting down panic.

"What d'ye mean? We're not about to let him do anything!"

"Why are you holding your wands on him?"

The others spared him quick, incredulous stares. "What's the _matter_ wi' ye?" said Gwen.

Draco blinked and turned to Harry. "All right, what happened?"

"N-nothing!" Harry burst out, deeply shaken. "I just got back from a splinch call in Orkney, I stepped out of the Floo and they went mental on me!"

Draco glanced at the others. "Is that what happened?"

"Look," said Brian agitatedly, "you can't let him fool you, he's dangerous-"

"How do you know that?"

"Look at him!" yelled Brian. "He'll Avada Kedavra us as soon as look at us!"

Draco put his wand down. "All right, tell me what I'm supposed to be seeing," he said, forcing his voice into a calmness he didn't feel. Bugger it all, they were supposed to be done with this shite. The war was over. He was supposed to be dealing with spot-removing charms gone wrong, not whatever the hell this was.

"He's dangerous! Canna ye feel it?" Pepper asked, her voice rising hysterically. Draco met Harry's eyes and saw only bafflement and fear.

"Did you do anything-"

"No! Bugger it, I told you, I just stepped out of the bloody Floo and they-" Harry waved his wand in the direction of the other three.

"Duina daar me, mellishon!" Gwen suddenly shouted at Harry, almost hysterical, lapsing into broad Shetlandic in her panic.

"I'm _not_ threatening you, I was just-"

"Put down your wand," said Draco.

"Are you daft?" Harry said, incredulous. "They'll kill me!"

"No they won't. I won't let them." Draco thought as quickly as he could. "Listen," he said urgently to the others, bringing his wand back up. "I'm keeping my wand on him. He won't do anything. I need you to lower your wands, then he'll do the same, and then... then we can call some Aurors in. All right? They'll deal with him."

"Aurors!"

"Harry! Shut up!" Draco snapped. "Trust me, for god's sake. Lower your wand and they'll lower theirs."

Harry stared at him, swallowing nervously, then hesitantly lowered his wand a fraction - only to snap it back up when Gwen drew hers back for a hex.

"GWEN!" Draco shouted. "FREEZE! Everybody! Freeze!"

There was a brief moment of silence and he took a deep breath.

Right. Bloody hell, he had to call the Aurors. He'd been trained to do this for out-of-control patients, but he never thought he'd have to do it for his own colleagues. He took a deep breath and said the incantation, focusing on the spell as well as he could while trying to maintain the fragile peace in the room.

Bugger it all, if the Aurors got here and also went mental on him, they might be in a bigger mess than before. Trained Dark Wizard catchers, turning on Harry Potter for no particular reason other than 'knowing' he was dangerous.

Well, he'd deal with that if he had to. He just needed to keep everybody calm until then.

"Look. Please trust me. Everybody, put your wands down on the ground. Now. Then step away. I'll put him in a body-bind till the Aurors get here - to keep you bloody well _safe_, Harry," he snapped, "before your colleagues hex you down to a stain on the floor."

Harry's breathing was very rapid and he stared at Draco for a long moment before slowly putting his wand down on the ground.

"All right. Come on," Draco said shakily. "Everybody put your wands down. Harry, sit so you don't fall down when I do the bind. Everybody, let's just... let's just relax and wait for the Aurors to show up, shall we?"

And please, let's everybody just try not to hex one another, because it would be embarrassing as hell to have to get St. Mungo's to treat this cosy little rural medical family.

"I'm not putting my wand down!" Brian exclaimed. "The bastard can do wandless magic, you know that!"

"Right. Well then, don't put your wand down," Draco said soothingly, maintaining eye contact with Harry and willing him to go along. "Hold it on him, very, very steadily. If he tries any wandless magic, I'll need you to be ready to follow my lead, right? I can take him down, but I can't have you throwing your own hexes at him without me knowing what they are, or they might cancel each other out. All right?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other three nodding grimly, and let out his breath in relief.

**oooooo**

"What?" Draco exclaimed in dismay a few hours later. "Why _me_? And why _there_?"

"It's a cottage we use for quarantine cases," said Helga. "And you're the natural choice to try to treat this; ye aren't affected by it."

"But we don't even know why that is, I could start getting paranoid any moment and we'd be away from everybody else and-"

"Matter of fact, we do know why that is. That Sandsay case was transferred to St. Mungo's yesterday and they've been working on it." She took out a long scroll with the words "St. Mungo's Mysterious Dark Illnesses Research Division" across the top.

"Near as they can tell, it's potion-based," she began. "From a batch of Death Eater potions hidden somewhere in the Orkneys. Harry took that splinch call in Orkney today because their clinic was still backed up from trying to deal with their case of it from the other day _and_ a new one yesterday. The Aurors've quarantined most of Orkney till they figure out how Harry came into contact with it and where the rest of the batch is." Helga pursed her lips. "The potion was probably designed to instill fear and submission in others, but it went a wee bit far with the fear."

Draco sighed. How many years since the war, and they were still dealing with its aftermath. In the Orkney and Shetland Islands, for Merlin's sake.

"St. Mungo's says the victim's Extrarius magical aura becomes 'falsely tinged with malice,'" read Helga. "It breaks past other people's mental shields just like Legilimens does, and scares holy hell out o' them. But a good Occlumens is immune. Enter Trainee Healer Draco Malfoy."

"And if my Occlumency cracks, we'll be in very deep shit. Alone. In a hut in the wilderness of Shetland, with me thinking he's about to kill me."

"Is that really why you're reluctant to do this?" Helga narrowed her eyes as Draco pressed his lips together. "Or do ye have another reason?"

"Look, the reason I don't want to is..." he trailed off, totally at a loss for what to say.

"...something pretty damned important, something important enough to make ye want to ignore a patient in need," Helga said coldly.

"Can't somebody else-"

"Nobody else trusts him. You're impervious to the curse. St. Mungo's is too busy dealing with their own cases, and I've a clinic to run."

"But - this isn't - no. This isn't Trainee Healer work."

"You're not an ordinary Trainee Healer. You can handle it."

_And if you had any idea just how much this Trainee Healer wants to 'handle' this particular patient, you wouldn't be so eager to send them off alone together_. For a brief, horrified moment, Draco wondered if he'd said that out loud, before he gave himself a small shake and set his jaw. "I'm not going to do it. I can't."

"Don't insult my intelligence. This has nothing to do with 'can't'. Your technical competence is above reproach. I think this is more like 'won't.'"

"All right," Draco said tightly. "I won't."

Helga appraised him coolly for a long moment, then leaned back in her chair and spoke slowly and thoughtfully. "I'm sure ye can understand that there were many people who doubted that someone with your... background and history would ever be able to put the needs of a patient ahead of his own. But so far ye've never given me cause to doubt my decision to take ye on as a Trainee."

Draco gritted his teeth. "But I will if I don't take on this assignment," he finished for her evenly.

Here they were, and he should have known this would come up sooner or later. Nights spent staying up with patients, or studying, or sleeping next to a critical patient's bed in case they woke up flashed before his eyes, and wilted under Helga's cool gaze.

"I won't say ye have to. I'll leave it to your conscience."

Draco clenched his jaw. "Do you know," he said, maintaining the same even tone, "my father used to do the same thing. Giving a choice without giving a choice."

Helga had the grace to drop her eyes and blush slightly at his mention of a man nobody at Muckle Roe Clinic had mentioned until now.

She cleared her throat. "Look, it's not just... not just proving your trustworthiness," she said, a little too loudly. "It's - this is a wonderful professional opportunity. Ye were a Slytherin, ambitious, weren't ye? The chance to solve this case is one I would think ye'd be happy to take. Particularly with Harry Potter as a patient."

If I were really that bloody ambitious, I wouldn't be here in Muckle Fucking Roe, would I? Draco wanted to hurl back at her. And if Harry wanted to be famous as a patient or as anything else, he probably wouldn't be here _and_ using his mother's maiden name, would he?

And none of that would matter to Helga. All she saw was a patient in need, and a Trainee Healer who could help him, and whatever she needed to do to get that patient help, she would do. Consummate Healer. Would've made a good Slytherin, too.

And his own selfish reasons for not wanting to be around Harry probably wouldn't impress her in the least.

He nodded tightly. "Fine. Arrange it and I'll go." He left her office before he could say anything he would regret.

**oooooo**

"Erm... where the hell are we?" was the first thing Harry asked as soon as the two rather skittish Aurors had signed him over to Draco's care and hastily Apparated away.

Draco frowned. "Did nobody tell you?"

"Nobody's said much since I stepped out of the Floo. Other than Get away, or Move and I'll kill you." Harry's smile was dry, but Draco could read the tension in his voice. "I suppose being convinced they're an inch away from death puts a bit of a damper on their conversational skills."

"Ah. Well, we're at the Muckle Roe quarantine cottage near Burki Taing. We're here until I solve this, or St. Mungo's does." _Or until I go mental and leap into your lap in the middle of an examination. Best not say that last bit out loud though_.

"Quarantine? I'm not contagious, am I?"

Draco's eyebrows drew together. "No. Did nobody even ask you if you wanted to be treated at the clinic or not?"

Harry shrugged. "No. I suppose it does make sense, though. I didn't particularly want to stay at the clinic either." He wandered over to the window. "I've been having the oddest flashbacks; it's almost like I'm back at school."

Draco looked at him in surprise. That was something that hadn't come up between them in the year that he'd been at the clinic. They chatted about patients, Quidditch, the news, and the truly vile curry house in Lerwick's Market Street. They had never broached the topic of Hogwarts.

"Really? Why?"

Harry smiled grimly. "Let's see, in second year I was the Heir of Slytherin, in fourth I'd gotten into the Triwizard Tournament through foul play out of a pathological need for attention, and in fifth year I was a half-mad liar with delusions of grandeur. Yeah, I'd say I've got the role of wrongfully mistrusted down fairly well."

Draco didn't know what to say to that.

"So, do you have any ideas?" Harry asked.

"I have a lot of ideas. The two cases in St. Mungo's have the Healers baffled, but they've sent us their notes."

"Two? And they still haven't solved it?"

"No. But I don't think they were making it a big priority until this morning - you know there was that Felix Felicis gone bad, they've been working round the clock on that one for weeks, pulled all the good Healers into it. The patients with this aren't dying; they're just going through some discomfort."

Harry raised an eyebrow.

Draco backtracked hastily. "Damn. Sorry, I don't mean to minimize your problem," he said, and inwardly smacked himself. Oh now that didn't make him sound like a prat, giving Harry the standard rote comment to patients, which Harry had probably said a hundred times himself.

"And you will do your utmost to help me through this regardless of whether it's life-threatening or not, I know," Harry said impatiently. He waved that aside. "So, what ideas do you have?"

Draco shook his head. "Listen, you're here as a patient. Don't try to heal yourself."

"I know, a Healer who heals himself has a fool for a patient. I'm not a Healer, I'm a mediwizard."

"Close enough."

"No it isn't. We're not trained to believe we're the final authority on medical care," Harry grinned at him. "So, do share. First off, do they even know what the hell this is?"

"Yeah, it's a bad batch of Death Eater potion," Draco said, noting with approval that his voice didn't betray, at all, the embarrassing flip his stomach always performed in reaction to Harry's grin these days. "Your Extrarius aura has a false tinge of malice."

"My what has a what?"

"Your Extrarius aura. The force of your... 'outward' magic, used for spells that affects other people's minds, like Legilimency. Yours has been tinged with malice, so that wizards and witches near you become convinced that you're out to harm them."

"So if I'm around Muggles, it's not a problem?"

"Shouldn't be. That's part of why they're not that worried about the cases at St. Mungo's right now; if the Healers can't cure it, the patients can just live in the Muggle world until its effects wear off."

"That's not much of a solution."

Draco shrugged. "The two cases they've got are both half-bloods. Shouldn't be that difficult for them."

Harry gave him an unreadable glance and went back to the scroll. "So my magical aura is 'tinged with malice'. God, it sounds like I'm being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force."

"The what?"

Harry shook his head. "Muggle thing, never mind. What have they tried so far?"

"Well, apparently St. Mungo's tried truthspell charms so that others could see she was telling the truth when she said she wasn't going to hurt them. That backfired; they started to think she was a master manipulator because she sounded so honest. They tried cheering charms for the people around her, which just made them very happy that she'd been taken into custody. Then they tried calming potions for everyone, but the only dose strong enough to knock out the paranoia made two of the subjects lose bladder control." Harry chuckled, and Draco skimmed through the rest of the scroll from St. Mungo's. "They've tried reverse Obliviates, implanting false memories to convince people of what a good person she is; no effect. They also tried some trust spells to wear down the aura of malice-"

"Trust spells? What are those?"

"Variation of an Unbreakable Vow, actually," Draco said, and felt himself unexpectedly blushing as Harry raised his eyebrows.

Damn. Few things unsettled him as much as reminders of his own past, and here was a big one, the memory of sixth year and Snape's Unbreakable Vow to his mother floating between him and Harry now, as tangible as a Hogwarts ghost and as difficult to ignore.

Bad enough he was out here _because_ of his bloody past, because Helga had thrown it in his face. Bad enough that he was with somebody who had been there for so much of that past. Whoever directed his life had a miserable sense of humour, because that same person had gorgeous green eyes that were gazing at Draco steadily and distracting the hell out of him even as he struggled to keep his damned past firmly in the past, where it belonged.

He cleared his throat and pressed on. "An Unbreakable Vow basically sets up trust between the person making the Vow and the recipient of the Vow. It requires honesty from the caster, and that honesty is felt in the magical aura of the caster, and affects the magical aura of the person to whom the Vow is made."

"Right, yeah, I remember hearing that before. But how does this help now?"

"Well, basically, the casters - the Healers - have been trying to use a Trust Spell in the same way. They cast the spell and then divulge personal information, showing that they trust the recipient - the patient - to not use their information against them, to not act with malice against them. Hoping to wear down the false appearance of malice in the patient's aura."

"That... doesn't make much sense to me."

There was a time, too long ago, when watching Harry get confused would've made Draco positively cackle with glee. Now he found it endearing. _Kill me now_, he thought wistfully. "Well, most of the solutions don't make much sense, when you think about it. They're just trying whatever sounds like it might possibly work."

"And does it work?"

"No, not really. But at least it hasn't backfired, like almost everything else."

"So are you going to try to do that?"

"I think I'd like to try a couple of the potions first, with some changes."

"And if that doesn't work?"

"Then, we'll go to the Trust Spells."

"Why would they work for you and not for St. Mungo's?"

"For one, I don't think the variation of the Trust Spell they used was the right one. It's always tricky, using spells to fight potions and vice versa. And for another, none of the Healers know their patients, so I doubt it would require much trust to say anything to them. If I were to tell a random patient something like, oh, I don't know, I adore pink plaid, I don't think it would mean much. Telling you would involve a fair bit of trust."

"Pink plaid?" Harry snickered. "I'd take the mickey out of you for that."

"That doesn't make me eager to share. But you get the point."

"Erm... yeah, I suppose so. Though I would've thought a Trust Spell would be less likely to work if it was coming from you. I mean, you're not cringing away from me like everybody else."

"That's only because I'm an Occlumens. The important point is that the Trust Spell, along with actual trust, will wear down the malice emanating from your aura. I don't think it'll matter that I don't actually feel afraid of you."

Harry nodded, still a bit doubtful. "All right, if you say so. Whatever works."

"So, tomorrow potions. Hopefully that'll work. If not, the next day we'll go on to Trust Spells."

"Fair enough. I take it we're not going to do anything tonight?"

Draco automatically suppressed any reaction to Harry's innocent question and shook his head. "You may as well settle in and go to bed. I'll check that we've got everything we need for tomorrow, then I'll go to bed myself."

And please, let the potions work, thought Draco as Harry said goodnight and headed off to his room. Because even _thinking_ of the kinds of things he could confess to Harry...

He sighed as he went to bed, the potions ingredients dutifully checked. This had been a terrible idea. He shouldn't have come here; he should've insisted Harry be sent to St. Mungo's. No matter what Helga said, she knew he was a dedicated Healer. He'd spent the last four years proving that, to himself and to everybody around him. To everybody who'd assumed he would end up a useless, idle rich boy, living on the tattered remnants of his family's wealth and power and trying to hang on to a way of life that had gone down in flames with Voldemort. To every single person who'd smiled to his face and congratulated him for his contribution to the war while making snide remarks behind his back about what Malfoy money could and couldn't buy. He had shown them, and he'd shown Helga, and letting her essentially bully him into this situation was...

This was pointless. He turned over in bed, blowing out his breath in frustration. He'd long ago learned to avoid this kind of brooding, because it never went anywhere.

Unfortunately, what he usually distracted himself with... might not be such a good idea right now. A good one off at the wrist would undoubtedly distract him and send him right off to sleep, but...

No, probably not a good idea. Not with Harry right here, separated by only a very thin wall, maybe even touching himself as well right now - AUGH! He very quickly blocked that thought off. He was _not_ going down that path, or he'd go mental.

All right then. He quickly ran over his options. One: toss and turn through the night, trying not to think of Harry right next door. Unacceptable. Two: sleeping spell. Invariably left him groggy and cross the next day. Next: wank himself to sleep. Which probably wasn't wise either, but seemed rather more workable than the first two options.

So. How to do this without compromising whatever laughable smidgen of detachment he still had with respect to Harry. Let's see... the new Keeper for the Kestrels was quite fit. Male, though. Erm... there was that spokeswoman for SleekEasy, whom Jessica had introduced him to last month. Vapid and vacant, but quite lovely. With long black hair that... would probably look better if it was a little... messier...

Bloody hell.

All right, not the SleekEasy spokeswoman, then. Back to the Kestrels Keeper. Tall, stocky, graceful, large square hands that Draco could just imagine holding him, threading through his hair, coming to rest on the back of his neck...

He sighed and turned over, reaching down. Most nights he preferred to let arousing images build until he was itching to touch himself, but tonight he just wanted this over as soon as possible.

Most nights. Rather a sad statement, he reflected. Having a nightly masturbatory routine when he was married. When was the last time he and Jessica had bothered to touch each other?

Damn. Predictably, with thoughts of his wife, his vague arousal was dispelled. Better than saltpeter, Jessica was.

Right. Back to the... who was he supposedly fantasizing about?

Kestrels Keeper, right. Oh, bother that, he was in no mood to build a fantasy. He'd just have to go with nameless and faceless, and hope that none of the images would remind him of Harry.

Yes, hands touching him, gliding over his chest, pulling him in firmly, feeling a lean body against his - let's give that body breasts, breasts were an excellent idea - and he sighed, touching himself and imagining a mouth ghosting over his neck. Hands moving his head to the side, lips nibbling on his earlobe, a warm wet mouth slowly going lower... he sped up his own movements, imagining that mouth curving in a smile as it reached its destination, and bright green eyes looked up at him-

Bugger!

No. Not acceptable. He was in a very small house, with a colleague right next door; a colleague with whom he not only had to maintain a good working relationship, but for whom he also had to try to fix a condition that might very well require him to reveal rather personal things. Like, say, this.

He sat up. A shower. Tossing off in the shower was easy. No fantasy required, the physical stimulus of the water itself was pleasant enough to get him going. He picked up his towel and headed down the hall.

"Oh! Sorry-" Harry said as Draco stepped back to avoid being hit by the washroom door. "Sorry, I thought you were already asleep."

"W-what?" Draco stammered, totally off-balance from the sight of Harry's rosy cheeks, his freshly showered scent, his skin radiating heat and his green eyes a little unfocussed without glasses. "No. No, I was still awake. I was just, erm, going to..." stop talking, he told himself, and hoped that Harry's eyesight was bad enough that he wouldn't be able to see Draco's flustered blush.

Come to think of it, he knew Harry's eyesight was that bad. Helga had had him practice eyesight test charms on all his colleagues. Thank you, Helga. And Harry was talking.

"...still enough hot water in there," he was saying, a bit apologetically, and Draco _wasn't_ wishing he could gaze at Harry's flat stomach, barely visible from under the towel Harry had thrown over his shoulder, pants riding low underneath. "Sorry, I didn't know if you showered in the morning or at night."

"Morn - erm, actually, both," Draco mumbled, closing the door behind him. And _no_, he was decidedly not going to wonder whether Harry had just used the shower for the same purpose he was about to.

**oooooo**

**Thursday**

"Why are we here, anyway?" Harry asked the next morning as they prepared a large batch of potions from St. Mungo's instructions. "I would've thought they'd transfer me to St. Mungo's."

"Helga considered it. Decided she'd rather keep you here."

"Why did you agree to it though? Don't you have exams next month?"

_Because among my many other failings, I'm apparently also a masochistic idiot_, Draco thought to himself as he gave the blue potion one final counterclockwise stir and firmly forced his eyes to stay on the cauldron and not on Harry's hands and arms, the sleeves of his casual green shirt pushed up to his elbows as he worked on the potions.

"Did she force you to?" Harry frowned as he started to slice a dried mandrake. "She's not allowed to do that. Trainee or not, you have a right to refuse to take on an extra assignment like this. Especially when you have exams coming up."

"She didn't... really force me to." Draco cleared his throat and poured the potion into a flask. "I'm here because... because I am who I am."

"What?"

"Because I told Helga that I didn't want to, for reasons of my own, and she said she hadn't yet had a chance to regret taking me on as a Trainee before now..."

Harry's eyebrows drew together and he paused mid-slice. "But now she did? Why?"

"Because of who I am. Basically, I need to prove myself. Prove that I can put a patient's needs above my own. Despite my... history."

"Your - you mean-" Harry's eyes widened slightly. "Oh." His eyebrows drew together. "Wait, after a year at the clinic, all of a sudden this comes up?"

"You'd be surprised about when these things come up. Slice the mandrake thinner," he said, and started chopping dried Seena Leaf.

"It's happened before?" Harry asked, resuming his work.

"Of course it has," Draco said irritably.

"But you were given an Order of Merlin-"

"I was given a Dark Mark before that."

"You were sixteen!"

"You were fifteen when you led an attack on the Department of Mysteries and won."

Their knives cutting were the only sounds for a while. "That was a long time ago," Harry finally said quietly.

"Not long enough."

"So... she wants you to prove yourself," Harry said, his voice neutral. "And you're trying to do that."

"Which is stupid."

"Yeah, it is. Your record is clear. You're a good Healer, she should know that."

Draco let the warm glow from Harry's words sit for a brief moment before squashing it. "It's not Helga who's stupid," he said brusquely, adding Harry's sliced mandrake to one of the cauldrons and his chopped Seena Leaf to another. "I'm stupid for letting her get to me and ending up here."

"What?"

"Because I can't prove myself. I can't - there is nothing I can do in this lifetime that'll mean I'm done proving myself. The Dark Mark will never come off, and no matter what I do, there will always be doubt. Until the day I die, somebody will want me to prove myself." _And you can really stop babbling any time now_, his brain suggested helpfully, and he firmly closed his mouth.

Harry was silent as they started to pour the remaining potions into their flasks. "So why are you here, then?" he finally asked.

"She also pointed out that I could advance my career by solving this."

Harry raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"No, I didn't think so either. If that's what was important to me, I wouldn't be in Muckle Roe, would I?"

"No, you wouldn't." Harry started to write labels for their potions as Draco cast cleaning spells on the cauldrons. "So... why are you here?" he repeated.

"I don't know," Draco shrugged irately. "Maybe to prove myself to me."

"And why didn't you want to be here?"

"That's private," he snapped, and Harry's eyebrows went up slightly. Draco cleared his throat awkwardly and finished the cleaning spells. "In any case, I shouldn't waste any confessions, just in case the potions don't work, right?"

"Right." Harry cleared his throat. "All right, so. I'm supposed to try all of these..." he pulled a face at the counter full of neatly labeled flasks. "And how will we know if they work?"

"I'm reading up on how to make your Extrarius aura visible." Draco ran his hand through his hair. "I wasn't supposed to have to learn that until near the end of my training, so it may take a while to get it right. Until I can figure it out, we'll just have to Floo back and forth to the clinic."

"Won't that be a bit disruptive for them?"

"They've sealed off the Floo room from the main clinic for now."

"Erm... I don't particularly want to try this with other people. It's a bit unnerving, having friends pointing their wands at me."

Draco chewed on his lip thoughtfully.

"Why not try magical beasts?" Harry suggested. "There are always owls and kneazles and other animals around the clinic."

"Good idea. All right, then, I'll try to decipher how exactly I'm supposed to make your Extrarius aura visible. You start in on those potions."

Harry grimaced as he looked at the long range of flasks emitting mostly foul vapours on the counter. "Lucky, lucky me."

**oooooo**

**Friday**

"I take it bright pulsing purple is bad," Harry said the next day, a little cross-eyed as he tried to peer at his own aura.

"It's not good," Draco agreed. "St. Mungo's said it's normally supposed to be 'glowing softly, somewhere between blue to green.'"

"Not a lot of green here," Harry commented. "Funny, I really don't feel like I'm being hostile."

"You're not," Draco said automatically, concentrating on the aura. "It's just the potion, you know that."

"I really thought that last orange potion yesterday would help," Harry said. "It certainly made me feel different."

"Before or after you threw it up?"

"Right after I drank it. I thought maybe it had reversed the effect, because I really thought you were trying to kill me."

"Ha ha."

"So I take it we're starting confession time?" Harry said as Draco put his wand down and checked his notes.

"Let me set up the Trust Spell first," he said distractedly, reading over the scroll.

"I'm all aquiver now. D'you really like plaid?"

Draco gave him a quelling glare.

"Sorry. I probably shouldn't joke about it, should I?"

"I don't think it'll make that much difference," Draco admitted. "Might make this easier, even. Now hush for a moment."

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, reached for the mental space the scroll from St. Mungo's had suggested. "_Confidotuom_," he said carefully, and a light grew out of his wand, slowly enveloping Harry.

He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry for how I acted towards you in school."

"What?"

"I had a lot to do with how people saw you back then. What you said, about people suspecting you of all those things. And I regret that, now."

Harry looked nonplussed. "That's your confession?"

"It seems a good place to start. And it's not that personal."

"Then why use it as a confession?"

"Because I have to start with something, to see if it helps at all to do the spell slightly differently. And I don't know how powerful the confessions are supposed to be, and I'd really rather not tell you all that much. No offence."

"None taken."

Draco ended the _Confidotuom_ spell and waved his wand over Harry again, and the pulsing purple aura appeared around him.

Harry shook his head. "No change."

Draco squinted a bit, concentrating. "Not much... but it's very slightly less red-tinged. I think." He blew out his breath and jotted down a few notes.

"Are you really?" Harry asked.

"Really what?" Draco asked distractedly, trying to describe the very minute change he'd seen. Knowing that he'd need to keep very careful notes if he was to make any headway towards solving this.

"Sorry."

"What?" Draco glanced up.

"Sorry about what you did at Hogwarts."

"I just said I was." Harry nodded, but looked somewhat skeptical. "Why would I lie about something like that?"

"No, it's not that I thought you were lying, just..." He paused. "I suppose I thought you'd think everything you did back then was justified. That maybe I was as much a wanker to you as you were to me."

"You were. I'm just sorry for what I did."

"Oh."

Draco went back to his notes.

"Erm... do you need me here for this?" Harry asked hesitantly after a moment.

"What? Oh - erm, no, I don't think so. You're free to wander off if you want."

"Will you be doing another one soon?"

"Not soon," Draco said, skimming his notes. "The St. Mungo's Healers recommended waiting a few hours between spells. Personally I don't think it's necessary, but I'm willing to go along with their recommendation for now."

"Good thing Helga sent us a chess set this morning, then."

"Yeah, good thing," Draco agreed, not looking up. Very good thing.

From bright pulsing reddish purple to... only slightly less bright pulsing reddish purple. The fact that there was a change was encouraging. The fact that the change had been almost imperceptible...

Draco suppressed a groan. The confession hadn't taken much out of him; it was the kind of thing that would've probably come out over a Butterbeer after a long shift at some point in their working relationship, if he didn't still have a smidgen of Malfoy pride left to cling to. Apologizing for a stupid adolescence was something probably about 95 per cent of adults - including Harry - should do at some point.

But the change had been so depressingly minuscule...

**oooooo**

"All right, it looks like there was a minute change," he said a few hours later. "It's not much, but then again, the confession wasn't much either. So. Let's try again."

Harry smiled. "This is where I get to hear your secret fashion faux pas."

"No. _Confidotuom_. This is where you get to hear that I was the one who told Rita Skeeter half the stuff she wrote about in our fourth year."

Harry looked taken aback, then started to laugh.

"What?"

"I already knew that."

"What?"

"I knew. Hermione figured it out. She saw you talking to Skeeter in beetle form once, figured it out, and told Skeeter she'd be exposed as an unregistered Animagus if she didn't stop writing about me."

Draco sat back, stunned. Good god.

"Sorry," said Harry, still laughing. "God, your face..." He suddenly frowned. "So does that mean the confession has no power?"

"What? Oh! The confession. No, it should still work; I didn't know you knew, so I had to trust you in order to tell you." Draco waved his wand to end the Trust Spell and illuminate the aura. "Yeah, there it is. The colour's the same, but the emanation of malice isn't pulsing as intensely."

"Hm." Harry peered at his aura. "That's fascinating." He grinned at Draco. "So, my evil is only throbbing gently now. How very... un-reassuring."

_You will not react to the word "throbbing,"_ Draco told himself sternly as he occupied himself writing, making a deliberate blot with his quill in order to be able to busy himself cleaning it up.

"I don't think I like the term 'emanation of malice' though," said Harry thoughtfully. "I think I prefer Aura of Malevolence. Or Pulse of Wickedness. Could you call it my Pulse of Wickedness?"

Draco chuckled, still writing. "So you knew I talked to Skeeter," he said as he wrote. "That's how you caught her. I'd wondered about that. I thought Granger had maybe caught her going into Animagus form or something."

"No, not hardly."

"That's... that's interesting." Draco paused, then looked at Harry suspiciously.

"It's interesting to watch your face make the next connection," Harry smirked. "You just remembered that Skeeter wrote a very nice interview with me in the Quibbler in fifth year, didn't you?"

Draco nodded slowly.

"Yeah, well, we blackmailed her," Harry said, laughing again as Draco's eyebrows shot up.

"Good god. Fifteen years old and blackmailing journalists. Resourceful little tykes, weren't you?"

"Very."

Draco shook his head and took out a fresh parchment, beginning a report to send to St. Mungo's.

Damn it, this wasn't fair. Somebody had a rotten sense of humour, sticking him into this situation where he was pretty much compelled to tell Harry all sorts of pathetic secrets of his own while at the same time sitting and wondering what he wasn't hearing from Harry. Harry Potter, whose known exploits were legendary but who had most probably done a great many other things that had never made it into the papers, and that most people would love to hear.

Not fair at all. Especially with this exasperating crush of his, which even on normal days made him wonder all sorts of things about Harry. What was he like outside the clinic, what had he really been like those years that they'd gone to school together without really knowing each other at all, what was his home like, what did he think or feel about all sorts of things... what was he thinking right now, as he gazed thoughtfully out the window across the table from Draco while Draco wrote his clinical observations...

And talking to him about personal things was playing hell on Draco's ability to stay detached and see him only as a patient or even as a co-worker. It was excruciating, and probably going to get much, much worse before this was over.

This was ridiculous. He had to figure out some way of making this livable.

Well, for one thing, he could try to figure out what kinds of things he could reveal that would require him to show trust in Harry, without making him feel so horribly off-balance and vulnerable or increase his totally inappropriate attraction.

All right, then, no more confessions about school. School was where they'd known each other before the clinic, where his confessions were more likely to result in exchanges that might disturb his already less than stable emotional control. He had plenty of things he didn't particularly want to share that had nothing to do with school, nothing to do with Slytherin-Gryffindor and House points and Quidditch rivalries, nothing to do with Harry whatsoever.

He should figure out exactly what he was going to say. And how much he would elaborate. And how he was going to make sure his emotions stayed within safe professional limits.

But first, he was going to finish off his report to St. Mungo's, make some flimsy excuse to leave the room, and quite possibly go take another shower.

**oooooo**

**Saturday**

"All right," Draco said the next day. "St. Mungo's thinks I'm on the right track with the variation of the Trust Spell I'm using, and in how I'm doing the confessions. By their calculation, another four or five will do it. Lucky, lucky me."

"What about by your calculation?"

"I'm very much hoping they're right on this, because by my figures..." he trailed off with a grimace.

Harry looked like he was about to apologize, but thought better of it. "So... erm, what do I get to hear next?"

"_Confidotuom_." Draco took a deep breath. "I haven't spoken to my father in years."

Harry blinked. Clearly he hadn't been expecting anything like that. "Oh. How... how many years?" he asked hesitantly.

"Since fifth year."

Harry's eyes widened. "Fifth - you mean, before he went to Azkaban?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't you ever visit him there?"

"No. He wouldn't allow it. He let Mother see him, but not me. I think he didn't want me to see him in that place." He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands together. "I wrote to him. I couldn't tell him what was going on with the... with the task I'd been given in sixth year - I knew they read all our letters - but I wrote to him that I hoped he'd get out some day. I told him what I was doing at school - school things, not the - the other thing." He stopped, reminding himself he'd decided to use this confession because it - mostly - _didn't_ involve Hogwarts. "He never wrote back. He wrote to my mother; not to me. Mother said he didn't want to write to me about his cell being cold or the guards insulting him with impunity, and he had nothing else to write about." He smiled slightly. "I wouldn't have cared."

"And he's never changed his mind?"

"Never. I asked... after everything was over, I asked if I could see him. I didn't have Mother to speak through any more, didn't have her to tell me how he was, or let him know how I was doing, and as far as I know he didn't really have any other links to the outside world. Most of our family and friends were either in Azkaban or dead. I thought, maybe... everything was over and..." He shook his head. "He never answered any of my letters. I told him everything that had happened, told him why I'd made all the decisions I'd made, told him I just wanted to... to see him. I was a bloody hero of the war, on paper at least; he would've been able to visit in private, which he never got with Mother; there were always two guards and Aurors present." He sighed. "He never did."

"Did he give any explanation?"

"No."

"When was the last time you wrote to him?"

"Last year. I still write, every Christmas. Telling him what's going on in my life. I don't know whether he reads my letters or not."

There was a long moment of silence, then Draco picked up his wand to end the Trust Spell.

"Anything?"

"Yeah, well, it's working," Draco said with a grimace as the aura lit up again.

Harry nodded. "What's wrong?"

"Working bloody slowly. At this rate, you may be able to go back to civilized society only if I confess to having indecently propositioned a pumpkin or something."

Harry chuckled.

"Seriously, I'll have to make something up. Here, you wait here, I'll Floo back to my place and go hex a few of the Muggle brats at the day care next to my house, then I'll come back and confess to you about it."

Harry ran his hand through his hair ruefully. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well."

"I am, you know. And I'm sorry... I'm sorry your father won't talk to you."

Draco looked up in surprise.

"Were you close before he... was arrested?" Draco looked at him quizzically. "I mean, I know he was your father and you always talked about all the things he bought for you, but were you - did you have a good relationship with him?"

"I thought I did," Draco said after a moment. "Yeah, I think so. He wasn't the most affectionate person in the world, but... he was a good father. Mostly." He cleared his throat. "I can look back now and see that he made a lot of mistakes. And a lot of what he taught me was pure rubbish, I know that now. But overall..." he shrugged. "I thought he was a good father. He made me feel I was important to him. That he cared about me..." he trailed off uncomfortably and bent back over his notes.

Harry gazed thoughtfully out the window. "I never... obviously, I didn't know that side of him. He always looked like he didn't like you very much, whenever I saw him with you."

Draco drew in his breath, stung, and Harry looked back at him, puzzled, then winced and clapped a hand over his mouth. "Oh, shite, that was tactless, wasn't it? I - I didn't mean it the way it came out. God." He closed his eyes and shook his head, blushing darkly. "That came out completely wrong. Bloody hell, you tell me you miss your father and I tell you he was a wanker who didn't like you anyway." He cleared his throat. "Fuck."

Draco bit his lip, torn between hurt, anger, and amusement at Harry's mortification. He kept his face expressionless as Harry put his elbows on the table and rested his forehead on his clasped hands.

"I really didn't mean it that way," Harry said apologetically, his voice muffled. "I mean - bloody hell, he probably always looked annoyed at you when I saw him because _I_ was there. I didn't put him in a wonderful mood, I'm sure."

Draco shrugged, not particularly wanting to keep this conversation going, but not particularly wanting to pardon Harry's insensitive comment, either.

"I'm-"

"Yeah. You're sorry. Apology accepted, let's move on, shall we?" he said brusquely, and Harry swallowed and nodded.

There was a long silence as he wrote his observations in the log and checked up on the latest scroll from St. Mungo's. Burying himself in the intellectual puzzle of trying to figure this out, see the differences between what he was doing and what they were doing at St. Mungo's, pleased with himself that the Healers there had implemented a few of his suggestions, to good effect. He looked up as Harry cleared his throat.

"Yes? You don't have to be here, you know."

"I know." Harry was still looking discomfited by his gaffe, and Draco finally took pity on him and gave him a small smile, indicating no hard feelings, before turning back to his work.

"I... I haven't talked to Ron in a long time either," Harry suddenly blurted, and Draco paused, his quill still poised over the parchment.

"Weasley?"

"Yeah."

"You two had a falling out?"

"Not... exactly."

"What do you mean?"

"We never... we never had a big fight. There wasn't an end to our friendship. We just sort of... drifted apart."

"When?"

"During the war. Especially near the end." Harry ran his fingers through his hair. "I... I had to do a lot of stuff during the war. Before, and during. And... it wasn't any one thing, that drove us apart. We fought, a lot - he didn't agree with a lot of what I did, and I didn't tell him everything I was doing, and he hated that I kept secrets from him. Then the war ended, and there was all that publicity... and Ron didn't much like the fact that he hardly got any credit for any of what happened. Which wasn't fair, because he'd done a hell of a lot. Then he started to... embellish some of what he'd done. But no matter what he said, people still wanted to hear _me_ talk about it, even though I didn't want to." He smiled bitterly. "It... gnawed at him, I think. We tried - well, I tried, to get past it, but it just... gnawed at him." Harry took a deep breath. "Then of course there was the whole nightmare with Hermione, with me staying friends with her after their divorce... and then Ginny." Harry sighed deeply. "He's never understood what's between me and Ginny, even when we were together. And now... I'm still friends with her, but Ron..."

"What did happen with Weasley? Ginny, that is?" Draco asked curiously.

Harry started to shake his head, then tilted it to the side and looked at him. "You know, this might make things a little less painful for you if I reciprocate."

"Beg pardon?"

"Won't it? I mean, you're spilling your guts to me; if I confide in you, won't that help the strength of your own confessions become a little stronger? Who knows, it might keep the Muggle kids near your house safe. Not to mention your vegetable garden."

"Then please don't, I'd love an excuse to put them out of my misery," Draco said dryly. "Besides, I've always wanted to get up close and personal with a potato." He thought for a moment, then started to shake his head. No, with the type of spell he was weaving it really wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference if Harry reciprocated or not.

Then again, it wouldn't hurt. And what the hell, this was painful enough for him; he might as well get something out of it.

"Yeah, that might help," he said slowly. "Tit for tat?"

"Right." Harry suddenly grinned. "And even if it doesn't help, somewhere inside you is a Slytherin who's happy to be getting something out of this deal, right?"

"That's a little cynical of you, isn't it?" Draco said disapprovingly. "So, you were about to tell me about Girl Weasley."

Harry laughed. "Unfortunately there's not that much to confess there. We just didn't work out. Good friend, but not really my type. Ron's never really understood that; he took it as a personal rejection of his whole family."

"Why wasn't she your type?"

"Oh god, a lot of reasons. At the end what clinched it was I fell for a friend of hers. She knew; I told her about it, and we were open and honest and all of that and in the end, she pointed out that the kind of attraction I felt for Robin was what I'd felt for her, way back in sixth year. She pointed out that what we had wasn't really all that different from what I had with other good friends. We didn't even live together, and it wasn't because she was away with her team all the time. All we really had was friendship, with sex as an afterthought. Almost by obligation. From both of us."

"Ah."

"So she left. Or rather, she stopped visiting me so often. And I stopped visiting her. She's dating her team's Keeper now."

"Yeah, I read that."

"It still hurts, though. Not what happened with Ginny; what happened with Ron. He was the first friend I ever had; somehow I thought we'd stay friends till we were old." Harry shrugged. "All right, it doesn't compare to losing your father. But it's the closest I can come. Losing somebody I thought of as a brother." He sighed. "Still do think of him that way. But he's still got four real brothers. I doubt he thinks of me much any more."

Draco nodded in sympathy.

"So that's my match-up for the confession about your father," said Harry. "And I think I reciprocated your confession about Rita Skeeter yesterday with one of my own, about blackmailing her." He leaned back. "As for your first confession, about being sorry you made things tough for me at Hogwarts, and while we're on the subject of Ron..." He grinned suddenly, eyes bright. "Here's one of my Hogwarts indiscretions: Ron and me went into your common room once."

"What? How'd you find it?"

"You showed us where it was."

"You followed me?"

"Yeah."

"Under your famous Invisibility Cloak?"

"Oh, no, you led us right to it. Talking to us the whole time."

Draco frowned. "You've lost me."

"Second year, Christmas. You led us to your common room, let us in, and told us all sorts of things about the Chamber of Secrets."

Draco gaped. "I did not!"

"Oh, you did," Harry said, grinning widely. "Not only that, you told us that your family kept Dark objects in a secret vault under your drawing room."

"I did not!" he said, aghast. "What did you do, put me under Imperio?"

"Didn't have to. You told us of your own free will."

"Good lord. My father always wondered how the Aurors knew exactly where to look. D'you know they almost found his Necklace of Agony? He could've landed in Azkaban years early!"

Harry sobered a bit, but couldn't manage to keep the smile off his face.

"Go on, you tosser. Explain how the hell you did it, and how you learned to Obliviate so bloody well, because obviously I've no memory of it at all."

"Didn't need to Obliviate you. You thought we were Crabbe and Goyle."

Draco gaped again.

"You're very funny when you're flummoxed," Harry said cheerfully. "We Polyjuiced ourselves. Drugged Crabbe and Goyle, hid them away in a broom closet, became them, and waited for you to find us and lead us to your common room."

Draco sat back, stunned.

"Polyjuice?" he finally said weakly. "Second year - we were twelve! How the _fuck_ did you get your hands on Polyjuice?"

"Hermione brewed it."

"Oh, god. No bloody wonder you won the war, with her on your side. Brewing Polyjuice at age twelve. God." He shook his head. "And Crabbe and Goyle never said anything. Probably didn't notice they'd been knocked out; they never used their brains much when they were conscious anyway. And of course I wouldn't have said anything to them, if I didn't notice there was anything off about them." He shook his head, laughed ruefully. "God, that's brilliant."

"Yeah."

"Why, though?"

"We thought you knew about the Chamber of Secrets."

"I wish."

"Actually, we thought you were the Heir of Slytherin."

"Again, I wish. Well... I don't, any more. But I did back then."

"I know."

"All right, you've now successfully made me rethink this as an interesting exercise in mutual blackmail material and not just an emotional Crucio. Good job, Harry."

"No problem." Harry stood up and stretched, and Draco swallowed hard as Harry's shirt untucked itself from his trousers and rolled up a bit, showing a peek of his stomach. "Well, we've got a few hours before the next one. D'you want to go take a walk and look at those cliffs at South Ham that are supposed to be so pretty?"

Yes! Walk! Cliffs! Pretty! Draco's stomach-dazed id gibbered automatically before he reined it and gave it a slap. "No thanks, I've seen them already," he said, pleased to hear his voice coming out casual instead of breathless. "There's a few more suggestions just in from St. Mungo's, and Brian sent some ideas I need to read through. You go ahead, though."

"I'll see you at lunch, then," Harry said, and walked out.

Draco put his head on the table for a moment, then sat up and wearily unrolled the scrolls from Brian.

Mutual confessions. Harry was right, the Slytherin in him was cheering at the prospect. The Trainee Healer, however, was popping up to tell him this was probably a very, very bad idea, emotionally and professionally.

And the part of him that kept sneaking glances at Harry's hands and shoulders and stomach and arse when Harry wasn't looking was torn between wanting to congratulate him for this turn of events, and wanting to throttle him. He did not need to feel even more of an emotional connection to Harry.

Well, he'd been on Healer mode for years now. Perhaps he should allow himself Slytherin mode once in a while too; there really was such a thing as overcompensating for his past. And as for the part of him that was thinking about Harry's arse _right now_...

... yeeah, this was a bad idea.

All right, then. No more really personal confessions. Nothing related to school or his family. And actually, maybe he really should go and do something obscene with a vegetable, just to get this over with as soon as humanly possible.

Cursing himself for ten different kinds of an idiot, Draco buried himself in Brian's scroll.

**oooooo**

**Author's note Re. the links below:**

I got to know Shetland a bit while writing this story, so I decided to "see" where most of the action was taking place. Somewhere in there I found a website that offered a "virtual tour" of scenic Shetland that... well, let's just say it left me without much desire to see the place itself. It's detailed, it's very well organized, it's highly useful if you ever want to locate somebody in the Shetland Islands to within a metre or so... and it's almost completely unattractive in every conceivable way.

Intersections, guys. Intersections. That's what they show the most. Every blessed intersection in all the isles. And almost all the pictures taken on cloudy days. How... scenic.

I've been told Shetland is in reality a truly lovely place, and happily, I found a few pictures that seemed to back that up. But the bulk of the virtual tour site... myeah. Let's just leave it there.

Anyway. If you want to see for yourself, you can find this thrilling visual monotony at the following website:

www . originart . com / oa / frame2 . html

(After you cut and paste the above address onto your browser's URL window, don't forget to remove all the spaces.)

Most of the action takes place in the North Central map, so if you go there you'll be able to see Muckle Roe in all its glory. You may even find all the places I linked to.

1. Muckle Roe Clinic, Muckle Roe, Southpund/Lee W

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I - 1MuckleRoeSouthpundLeeW . jpg

2. Muckle Roe Map

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I -2MuckleRoeMap . png

3. Shetland - Wikipedia map (hey, this is fanfic, not a college essay, and I'm not proud; I'll use Wikipedia if I have to.)

en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Image3AWfmshetlandmap . png

4. Sandsay Clinic

www . jenks .demon . co . uk / orkneys . gif

5. Orkney (BTW, on the map, notice the set of islands northeast of Orkney? That's Shetland.)

en . wikipedia . org / wiki / OrkneyIslands

6. Shetland - Wikipedia entry

en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Shetland

7. Clett Apothecary, Whalsay-Symbister Skaw/Clate W

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I - 7Whalsay -SymbisterSkawClateJuncti . jpg

8. Shetlandic, Scots and Norn - the origins of Shetlandic.

myweb . tiscali . co . uk / wirhoose / but / zet / norn . htm

9. Quarantine House Beach View, Muckle Roe Burki Taing W

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I - 9MuckleRoeBurkiTaingW . jpg

10. Curry House, Lerwick Market Cross (69) W

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I - 10LerwickMarketCross69W . jpg

11. Cliffs, Muckle Roe South Ham N

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / I - 11MuckleRoeSouthHamN . jpg


	2. Chapter 2

**Sunday**

"_Confidotuom_. I wanted to play professional Quidditch after school. After the war was over."

"Really?"

"Yeah. My father had a friend, Seeker for Puddlemere, Gary Astons-"

"Not the one who was killed by Aurors on the Hogsmeade raid, was it?"

"Yeah, that one. Anyway, he'd told me that I had a lot of talent and potential – maybe not enough for first string on a really good team right away, but definitely good enough for the Wasps, as an alternate. I held on to that, repeated it to myself during a lot of the time I was in hiding. And I practiced whenever I could do it safely. It was something to aspire to, you know? Trying out was going to be one of the first things I did, once my name was cleared."

"So what happened?"

Draco shrugged. "I lost my nerve."

"In the try-outs?"

"Never even got there. I'd circled the dates on my calendar; there were five try-outs scheduled right after the trials, when I was finally exonerated. Two of them were after I got the Order of Merlin."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you go?"

He shook his head. "I pictured being in front of all those people, doing my best and failing, or doing my best and getting in but having people say I'd got in on my name or my fame. Or doing my best and succeeding, but still not being picked for security reasons or for political reasons... and I just never went."

Harry was gazing at him seriously. Too seriously, and Draco had to look away from the sympathy in his face. "Probably doesn't count as all that earth-shattering, I know. But it... was hard. Watching those dates go by, finally realizing I was never going to go. I never even told anyone I was thinking of trying out. Didn't want to talk about it, have them ask how I did, anything like that."

Harry nodded. Draco picked up his wand and did the necessary spells. Definitely a marked reduction in the aura. He started to write down his observations as Harry got up and went to get them both tea.

"D'you think your dad would've been proud of you if you'd made it?" he asked as he sat back down.

"Probably not," Draco said absently, nodding his thanks for the tea and continuing to write. "He didn't think Quidditch was a suitable occupation for a Malfoy. Then again, by that time his main occupation for the last four years had been growing his hair, so his opinion might have changed. Or not. Don't suppose I'll ever know."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, resting his chin on his hand as he slowly stirred his tea. "I wanted to play Quidditch too," he said quietly. "After everything was done, I mean. I didn't have the choice," he made a vague gesture at his leg. "But I'd also wanted to be an Auror, since before leaving Hogwarts. After the war, it didn't sound all that attractive. I'd pretty much already been an Auror forever; I wanted to do something with my magic other than use it to track and fight Dark wizards. Besides, I figured after Voldemort, hunting down old men smuggling flying carpets into the country probably wouldn't hold much appeal."

"No, I suppose not."

"And I was... tired. And..." he trailed off, observing the swirls of brown and white in his cup, his eyes distant as he seemed to try to find the right words. "And scared."

"Scared?" Draco repeated after a long pause.

"Yeah, scared."

"After everything you went through?"

"I survived a lot of horrible stuff. I fought incredibly powerful people and won, time after time. And every time I looked back and saw how narrowly I'd escaped, I knew it was mostly luck."

"That's rubbish."

"No, really," Harry took a sip of his tea. "Luck and a prophecy."

"The prophecy didn't say which one of you would be killed; it just said one of you would kill the other."

"Which means that every time I survived against Voldemort I could tell myself it was because of my skills or strength, but every time I survived against somebody else – Quirrel, or your father, or Bellatrix – I probably could've defended myself with a limp quill and still got away. Because they _couldn't_ kill me, because of the bloody prophecy."

"Rubbish," Draco repeated bluntly. "If nothing else, they could've left you incapacitated and easy for Voldemort to finish off. That would've satisfied the prophecy just as well."

"Maybe." Harry sighed. "But I'd had a lot of narrow escapes. I didn't want any more. I wanted a job where I could go to work and be pretty sure I'd come home at the end of the day."

Draco nodded. "So you became a mediwizard."

"Yeah. About as far from dealing with Dark Wizards as possible."

"Why didn't you do Healer training?"

"Two years studying, plus another three of apprenticeship? And getting an E in Potions NEWTs? You're dreaming."

Draco smiled and made one final notation on his report before taking a sip of his own tea.

"It's not that I regret what I didn't do," Harry said quietly. "I like being a mediwizard."

"Yeah, it's not a bad career."

"Just wish I'd chosen to do this only because I wanted to, and not because I couldn't play Quidditch and I was too scared of being an Auror."

"Yeah, that's the problem," Draco nodded. "Neither of us has a bad job, but... they're still not what either of us ever planned to do with our lives, are they?"

"No, they're not." Harry shrugged. "Could've been worse, though. We both could've ended up hating the jobs we ended up doing."

"I suppose so."

"Did you ever think you'd be a Healer, when you were growing up?" Harry asked.

"No. I always thought I'd follow in my father's footsteps." Draco smiled wryly. "This is better."

"Yeah, I suppose so." Harry toyed with his spoon thoughtfully. "You know, I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that you'd ever go into Healing. I didn't know what to think when I found out you were coming to Muckle Roe."

Draco hesitated for a moment before speaking. "Actually, I've always wanted to ask... why did you welcome me into the clinic like you did? I would've though that would've been the perfect opportunity to get back at me for a lot of things."

Harry's eyebrows went up. "Why would you think that? I didn't make things difficult for you during the war, did I?"

"We were in contact a grand total of three times," Draco pointed out. "And the situations weren't exactly conducive to working out any old grudges, for either of us."

"The war was over," Harry said simply. He hesitated, then went on. "Actually... to be honest, I did a bit of digging on you before you got here. Found out you'd done really well in Healer School. Got nothing but praise from your teachers and your supervisors at St. Mungo's. It looked like you were really trying to get past your... well, your past. I was trying to do the same thing." Harry shrugged. "I didn't see any reason to make things unpleasant for you."

Draco nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of his tea. This wasn't the right time to tell Harry that he was still grateful for that. There was no need, and he certainly didn't want the warm glow that Harry's smile would give him if he said anything of the sort.

In fact, it had been a bad idea to ask the question in the first place, because hearing that Harry had taken the time to look up Draco's record instead of just assuming he was the same person he'd known before the war... that he'd understood what it was like to want to start over...

And all of that on top of knowing now that Harry also knew what it was like to have to leave behind childhood dreams, and settle for just doing the best you could with what was left of you...

Damn it to hell, this was even worse than thinking of how fit Harry was, how green his eyes were and how nicely he filled his jeans. Now he was just feeling warm and... understood. Basking in Harry's approval like the pathetic lovesick idiot he was turning into.

He sighed deeply as he glanced at his report and realized the last sentence he'd written was gibberish, and picked up his quill once more.

Harry stood up. "Here, you finish up your notes, I'll get us some breakfast."

"All right. Thanks," he said, and tried to take comfort in the fact that the confession he planned for noon should have little or no unwanted emotional consequence whatsoever.

**oooooo**

"_Confidotuom_. I went Muggle for about six months, after the war."

"What?" Harry's teacup rattled and spilled a bit as he put it down.

Draco smirked at the shock on Harry's face. "I did. I was living in London and one day I wandered out of the wizarding areas. Started getting to know Muggle London and decided to see if I could live there."

"Why in buggery would you want to do that?"

Draco laughed at Harry's complete bewilderment. "Why wouldn't I?"

"They're... _Muggles_," Harry said, and Draco raised his eyebrows.

"Weren't you raised by Muggles?" Harry looked at him askance and Draco chuckled. "Sorry. I've heard about your relatives. Still, you've been friends with Muggle-borns all your life, surely _you_ aren't prejudiced against them?"

"That's Muggle-_borns_. Not Muggles."

Draco tilted his head quizzically.

"I'm not saying Muggles are inferior or anything," said Harry defensively, mopping up his spilled tea. "Just... why would you want to live with them?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Harry looked at him, at a total loss, and Draco took pity on him. "I... I was tired of the looks, the idea that anybody who looked at me knew who I was. I was tired of the Howlers and the marriage proposals and knowing that half the wizarding world thought they knew me, just because they'd read all sorts of rubbish about me, for good or bad. I wanted to see what it was like to not have anybody recognize me."

"You could've gone somewhere else in the wizarding world, then. America, the continent... even here."

"Not the same. I'd always be spotted as a foreigner, by my accent if nothing else. In Muggle England I could be just a regular person."

"Did it work?"

"Oh yeah."

"What was it like?"

"Horrible."

Harry laughed. "I can imagine."

"I've no idea how those people survive entire lifetimes without magic. I mean, it was a fascinating challenge in its own way, I suppose, but god, _so_ bloody inconvenient. No _Impervious_, no Apparition, no _Accio_. It rains and you get wet, unless you've got an umbrella. You have to walk or drive everywhere. You have to go pick up things from across the room." He shook his head. "And can you imagine trying to live in Shetland as a Muggle? Without _Lumos_, half the year you're almost always in pitch black, and right now without _Nox Fabrico_ it's daytime for about four months."

Harry grimaced and nodded. "What I can't stand is how... _dead_ everything is in the Muggle world. Did you notice that? You walk into a home, and _nothing moves_. Nothing talks to you, nothing looks at you... it's like being in a bloody cemetery."

"At least cemeteries have statues you can talk to."

"Muggle ones don't."

"Oh. No, I suppose not." Draco tilted his head, puzzled at Harry's manner.

"What?"

"It's just surprising to hear you saying things like that about the Muggle world. I guess I thought you'd be at home in it."

"God, no. I hate it. Never go there if I can help it."

"It didn't tempt you to leave the wizarding world after the war?"

"I thought of leaving the country, but never going Muggle. For one thing, I'd be a cripple."

"You could still use the compensation spells."

"Too much trouble making sure they were hidden, or I didn't relax and let them drop," Harry pointed out. "So what happened? Why did you leave?"

"Oh, just got tired of it." Draco realized he'd been talking for a few minutes and started. "Bugger – _Finite Incantatum_," he said, ending the Trust Spell and lighting Harry's aura.

"Any improvement?"

"Mmhmm..." He squinted in concentration. "That one didn't do much, but overall you're getting better. I may not have to fellate any cucumbers after all."

Harry laughed. "So did you learn anything?"

Draco frowned, puzzled. "Yeah, you're better."

"No, I mean about Muggles. About yourself."

"About Muggles, yeah, I suppose so. They're bloody unfortunate sods who take five times as long to do half as much as we do. About myself..." he trailed off and mulled it over a bit, then shrugged. "Nothing that the war hadn't already taught me."

Harry gazed at him thoughtfully.

Draco looked away, not particularly wanting to go down the conversational path of his war experiences. There was a brief silence, broken only by the scratching of his quill as he wrote down the results of the latest confession.

"My turn," Harry said.

"Mm, yes. Do tell," Draco put his quill away and sat back with a smirk.

Harry rested his chin on his hand. "It's interesting, isn't it? Thinking about things you don't normally talk about. Asking yourself why not, why you keep them private. Wondering what it'll feel like after you've shared them with somebody. It's... interesting." He took a small sip of his tea.

Draco smirked. "Harry, if this doesn't lead up to a very interesting confession involving a selkie or a succubus, I'll be incredibly disappointed."

"No, it's not... it's not anything that strange... well. Maybe." Harry stirred his tea, and Draco could almost feel him tensing up slightly before he finally spoke. "I... I like speaking Parseltongue."

"What?"

"I like it. It's... it's interesting, talking to snakes. It's a very... unique language."

Draco blinked. Of all the...

"I know, you probably think it's quite bizarre to confess to that."

"It's a rare talent. Why wouldn't you like it?"

"See, I didn't know it was bad, the first time I used it in public. I didn't know Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth, let alone that Voldemort was. I didn't even know that when I spoke to snakes I was speaking a different language; I just thought it was something strange that I could do, that probably scores of other wizard folk could too."

"Erm, no."

"Well I found that out, didn't I? Everybody looked at me like I was Jack the Ripper. I got the impression that it wasn't something to be proud of."

"Ah. Yeah, I suppose it wouldn't be, to a lot of people. Especially that year." And Draco was absolutely _not_ going to think about the first time he'd seen Harry speaking Parseltongue, because Harry had been twelve at the time and he was definitely not in any way shape or form going to think of that twelve year old child as _hot_. That speccy boy had nothing to do with the man Draco and Gwen had seen, not three weeks ago, softly speaking to one of the garden snakes near the clinics. With an absorbed, peaceful look on his face, and a tongue that was doing things that...

Augh, not so good to think of that tongue right now either. Draco's arousal had been shockingly sudden at the time; he'd had to discreetly adjust his trousers, and had the strangest flashback to that time when Marcus Flint had taught some of the younger Slytherin boys a spell to get rid of unwelcome erections, and Adrian Pucey had stepped in and said, "Don't bother, unless you're desperate. It'll hurt like a kick in your bollocks and probably make a mess in your pants. Just thank god for robes, or put a stack of books in front of yourself if you're out of uniform."

Well he wasn't wearing a robe right now, and he didn't have any books. Thank god for kitchen tables.

"So you're still self-conscious about it?" he asked, and Harry shrugged. "Is that why you looked so embarrassed the other day, when Gwen and I saw you speaking to that snake?"

Harry nodded. "It's... it's one of the only things Voldemort left me that I actually appreciate. And it's fascinating, what snakes speak about. D'you know they have insults?" He smiled to himself, gaze turned inwards. "The stripey one that lives under the blueberry bush hates the garter by the aconite, they're always competing for mice. The other day she called him a-" Draco had no time to brace himself before Harry hissed, strange syllables passing through his lips and leaving Draco unexpectedly hard as a rock and flustered as hell. "It means 'soft-shelled wet-skinned tadpole.' He got really angry. Called her a," and again with the hissing; Draco firmly clamped down on a whimper. "'Female so stupid she'll eat her own eggs.'" Harry's eyes were dancing with humour, and Draco returned his smile wanly. Harry pressed his lips together, his face going blank, clearly thinking he'd made Draco uncomfortable.

"Erm. Sorry." He ran his hand over his hair, and before Draco could figure out a way to let him know he wasn't put off by the Parseltongue – while still not encouraging Harry to say any more so he wouldn't come in his pants – Harry cleared his throat. "So, erm. Why did you leave the Muggle world? Did you mean to only stay six months?"

Draco blinked, off-balance. "No, I thought... to be honest I didn't put a time limit on it."

"What did you do?"

"Lived like a Muggle."

"How, though? Did you just go to their restaurants and clubs, or go to school, or what?"

Draco smiled. "Ah. No."

"What did you do?"

"This should count as a confession, actually. No, probably not."

"Oh, so it's something you haven't told people about, but it has no emotional weight for you to use as a confession?"

"Not now that I've told you I was a Muggle, no."

"Now I'm dying to know."

"I worked."

"_Worked?_" Harry's eyebrows shot up. "As what?"

"Lumberjack."

"What?"

"No, I'm joking. Exotic dancer."

"What?"

Draco laughed. "No, god. Taxi driver. And I'm serious this time."

Harry blinked. "You're taking the piss."

"I'm not. I already knew how to drive, didn't have to talk to people, got to spend a lot of time by myself or observing Muggles without having to interact with them, and I could very easily use magic to figure out where I was without anybody seeing me use it. It was perfect."

"You drove a taxi."

"Yeah."

"Bloody hell."

"Not a bad job, really. It was one thing I didn't mind at all about being a Muggle."

"So what did you mind? Computers, telephones? Light switches?"

"Oh, I mastered light switches just fine. Did pretty well with most of it, as a matter of fact. I managed to convert money into Muggle currency, and I rented a flat, and signed a lot of their weird little contracts. Had a bit of trouble with their bank machines, but really if you think of them as particularly stupid metal goblins, you're fine. Same with their internet – it's just a wireless on a flat piece of glass. Mice are just oddly shaped plastic wands that you move in a bizarre way, but it's just point and click instead of swish and flick, isn't it? Though it was a real bother remembering to contain my magic around electronics. I shorted out quite a few of those bloody boxes."

"So it wasn't the computers that did you in, then?"

"No. It actually was the bloody lights that finally did it for me. I mastered the switches, hadn't said Lumos in days, I came home, flicked the bloody thing in my front hallway – and it didn't work. I ignored it and just used Lumos spells, then another light went out. Then the one in the study went – and I couldn't do Lumos there because magic interfered with the computer and the telly. I tried everything. I was even thinking of moving out when my next door neighbour popped in. I guess I'd been swearing for a while, and she wanted to get some sleep."

"What did she do?"

"I'd gone on the internet, believe it or not. Asked what would make a light not work. Tried to figure out if the switch was broken, if the power was down, everything... and then this girl comes in, takes one look around, flicks the switch, asks me if I've changed the light bulb. Well of course I'd no bloody clue what she was talking about. So she looked at me like I was an idiot, went over to one of my lamps, took the light bulb out, screwed it into the broken light, and of course, there was light. I moved out the next day."

Harry laughed. "It's so funny, the things that trip you up, going from one world to the other. I still envy half-bloods sometimes."

Draco blinked. "You _are_ a half-blood."

"No, I mean half-bloods who grew up knowing both worlds, like Seamus Finnigan. I was in the same boat as Hermione or any other Muggle-born when I first came to Hogwarts; the simplest things caught me by surprise. Still do, sometimes."

"She didn't seem to have much of a problem with any of it. It drove a lot of us in Slytherin crazy, that a Muggle-born could do so much better at school than us."

"I can imagine," Harry chuckled, and drained his teacup. "That's Hermione, though. Drives people mental wherever she goes." He stood up. "So, finished your notes?"

"Oh – oh, yeah, I am," said Draco, and carefully rolled up his scroll. "We should get lunch."

"Yeah I was just thinking that too," said Harry, and they got up to get themselves sandwiches.

"Actually, I suppose I did learn some things," said Draco, uncomfortable with silence as they worked and still somewhat uneasy over the whole Parseltongue experience. Though happily, he'd at least brought his body under control. "I learned a lot of self-discipline. Not that I bothered to do things the Muggle way when I was by myself, but it was a bit trying sometimes, remembering to not do magic in public. That discipline helped, later, in Healer training."

"Yeah, I suppose it would. Can I have the butter?"

Draco passed it over. "Did you ever want to go back to the Muggle world?"

"No. Nothing there I'd want. Other than computers. I mean, I grew up knowing about computers, but by the time I'd gone to Hogwarts, most people had computers but not so much internet access. So I do get curious about the internet. But otherwise, I've never thought about going back." He cut a few slices of tomatoes. "It would be nice to be anonymous, though. Not have anybody care who I am."

"Yeah, that was the best part for me."

"Although coming to Shetland does that pretty well too, doesn't it?" Harry said, spreading the tomatoes on top of the butter.

"Yeah, it's nice to be apart because you're a foreigner, not because of who you are."

"I haven't noticed the foreigner thing as much, to be honest."

"You've been here longer," Draco pointed out.

"Learned the language a fair bit, too."

"Really?"

"You should try it. It's not really that difficult."

"Oh... um. No, I don't..." Draco trailed off, reluctant to admit that he had indeed studied a bit of Shetlandic in his scarce spare time. It was nice, having some secrets. And he didn't particularly want to make a fool of himself telling anybody he understood or spoke Shetlandic, then getting things wrong. He cleared his throat and murmured a toasting spell at his bread, then started slicing into a piece of leftover mutton. "So it's just computers you miss, then?"

"Nothing else worth missing." Harry waved his wand at his sandwich to warm it up. "And I was definitely glad I was in the wizarding world when I was dating Robin. I mean, I didn't even think about being discreet, other than keeping out of the way of the Prophet. But right at the time we were dating, a Muggle man was beaten almost to death in London, just for being out in public with his boyfriend. Robin and I had been out walking down Diagon Alley at the exact same time." He shook his head somberly. "It was... it was a little sobering. That could've been us."

Draco stopped in mid-slice. "Could've... you mean Robin was-"

"A bloke, yeah," said Harry, heading back to the kitchen table with his sandwich. "I remember thinking at the time, I sometimes feel like I have to hide the scar or look like someone else in Diagon Alley, so I won't feel like people are watching me, but at least I never have to pretend to be a girl when I'm with a bloke, just to not get beaten to a pulp."

"So... Robin was male." A faint scent of smoke startled Draco and he looked down at the cinder that had been his toasting bread. "Shite, _Finite Incantatum_," he murmured, and tossed the bread into the trash.

"Yeah, I'm bi." Harry frowned, looking at Draco. "Oh. Sorry, thought you knew that. There's more bread in the-"

"Yeah, I've got it," Draco got himself another slice and decided not to risk the toasting spell again. "No, I didn't know."

"Oh. Damn, what a waste of a perfectly good confession, then," Harry grinned, taking another bite of his sandwich. "Except, not really, as I don't much care who knows that. Sorry, I really thought you knew."

"No."

Harry suddenly seemed to register Draco's unease, and his eyebrows drew together. "Erm... it doesn't bother you, does it?"

"What? No, no. It's just a bit of a surprise. I didn't know you dated men."

"I usually date women. Just not exclusively."

"Since when?"

"Since... erm... six, seven years ago? I was with Ginny on-and-off since Hogwarts, though, and we didn't see a lot of people other than each other. I've only dated..." he narrowed his eyes and appeared to be thinking. "Four blokes. I was with Robin the longest. Three months, give or take a bit."

"So, not at school, then."

"No, though I knew since fifth year."

Draco raised his eyebrows.

"Erm. I had a bit of an... incredibly stupid crush on a classmate," Harry smiled ruefully.

"Really? Who?" Draco asked despite himself.

"Oh god no," Harry laughed, blushing. "It was embarrassing." He took a large bite of his sandwich.

"Come on."

He swallowed. "As in, more embarrassing than Ron and Lavender Brown."

"Oh Merlin, it wasn't Longbottom, was it?"

Harry laughed. "God, no. I thought it was just the craziness of the year, but the craziness left and the attraction stayed. Nothing ever came of it, though." He took another bite. "Shouldn't you test-"

"Right." Draco took out his wand, taking refuge in automatic action and frowning as the aura came to light. "That didn't do as much as I'd hoped."

"Bugger."

"Yeah." Draco made himself keep his voice light and his eyes on his work. "Sorry, I'll have to go over... I must've done something wrong..."

"Right." Harry finished his lunch and stood up. "I know, never disturb a Healer in deep thought. I'm going for a walk. D'you want a warming charm on your lunch?"

"Yeah, thanks. I'll probably be a while."

Draco waited for Harry to leave the room and put his head on the kitchen table, barely stopping himself from banging it onto the hard surface in frustration.

Harry was bi. And he'd said it so casually. Didn't even think about it. Assumed Draco knew.

This was absolutely not fair. He was stuck, in Muckle Roe Quarantine House, with Harry Potter, who was single and gorgeous and who actually understood, deep down, so many things that Draco had resigned himself to never being able to tell another person, but found so easy – and pleasant – to talk to Harry about. Harry Potter, who also seemed to get more outrageously _clueless_ by the minute, who had just hissed Draco into an erection he could've pitched a Quidditch Cup tent on, and then oh by the way, told him he was bisexual.

And Draco was running out of confessions almost as quickly as he was running out of sanity.

He headed for the loo, firmly shutting the door behind himself and noting ruefully that although he'd been able to dampen down his arousal enough to make it through lunch without embarrassing himself, the moment the bathroom door shut behind him, there he was again. Hard as a rock, and not even thinking of Jessica would make this go away.

Fuck. He touched himself through his trousers, swallowing back a moan and not even bothering to try to control the images his mind came up with. And, no surprise, there was Harry and some faceless man, walking down Diagon Alley, holding hands. Yes, gay wizards sometimes got annoyed stares from some of the older folk, but being openly gay in public was no more serious a social faux pas than snogging in public was for heterosexual couples, so there they were.

In his mind, Robin looked a great deal like the Kestrels Keeper. Ironic, seeing as how that's who was shagging Harry's ex-girlfriend, not Harry himself. But there were Robin and Harry, walking down Diagon Alley, and Harry was smiling and maybe leaning close to kiss him, and Draco cast a Silencio around himself automatically as he opened his trousers and finally felt some relief.

He closed his eyes. Image of Harry and Robin, smiling, maybe Harry whispering in Robin's ear, tongue appearing between his teeth as he whispered Parseltongue, and Draco breathed in deeply, guiltily allowing the image to build, what would it be like to hear that himself, Harry's mouth close to his own ear, and of course Robin was gone, he'd known that wouldn't last long no matter who he imagined Robin to look like, now it was Harry holding Draco, and putting his hand down Draco's trousers and whispering in his ear, and Oh _god_.

Hearing that tongue hissing incomprehensible syllables, imagining it hissing in a slightly more intimate setting _no, do **not** think of Harry giving you a blow job, he's your co-worker for the love of_ there he was, kneeling before Draco, grinning up at him and taking Draco into his mouth, as Draco whimpered and felt pressure and pleasure building up almost maddeningly, and Harry pulled away long enough to hiss something at Draco and the feeling of his mouth and tongue and the sound and the sheer power of Harry's magic had Draco biting back a cry as-

Fuck, this was impossible, Draco thought as he panted, his knees feeling weak and his libido almost stretched to breaking. Damn it.

**oooooo**

"_Confidotuom_. Not sure how much this will help, but I'm bi too."

"Really?" Harry laughed. "So it really doesn't bother you, then."

"No, it really doesn't. I've known since around third or fourth year."

"Well it's not really that big a thing here, is it. Though I had no idea you were. Wait – wasn't there that rumour that you'd dated Justin Finch-Fletchley after the war? I just thought it was because he had a bit of a," he cleared his throat, "reputation."

"Just a bit. I didn't date him, though. We just went to a lot of the same parties."

"How many blokes have you dated?"

Draco paused, thinking. "Erm... five? Six? Depends on what you mean by dating, I suppose. Some were just one-nighters." He ended the Confidotuom spell, lit Harry's aura. "...and that really didn't help much."

"Blast. No change?"

"Almost none."

"That's too bad. It does seem to be getting better overall, though."

"Yeah, we could probably Floo back to the clinic and test it on a couple of the-"

"Erm, no, that Kneazle of Brian's nearly took my eye out last test. I'd rather wait till all the purple's gone, if it's all the same to you."

"Yeah, that's fine." Draco took a deep breath. "All right, well, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this one, but here goes-"

"Wait, don't you have to wait-"

"Latest scroll from St. Mungo's said they've determined it doesn't make a difference if you do a new confession right after an ineffective confession." Draco smirked cynically. "Personally I think they made up the whole 'wait a few hours between confessions' because they just didn't have time to do one confession after another with the same patient, what with caring for quite a few people other than their aura patients. Then they got two new cases, put some Healers on it full time, and surprise surprise, they're now saying you probably don't have to wait."

Harry nodded and looked at him expectantly, and Draco took a breath to steady himself. Because damn, he _really_ didn't want to do this one. Unfortunately, it really seemed that confessions with "little or no unwanted emotional consequences whatsoever" weren't going to do the trick – or at least, they weren't going to do it fast enough to keep Draco from going insane in this blasted quarantine house. And this was a big confession, and could quite possibly clear the last of the taint off Harry's aura. Certainly worth it if it got them out of here.

But damn it, he still really didn't want to do it.

"All right. _Confidotuom_." He took a deep breath. "I'm in the middle of getting a divorce."

There was a profound silence as Harry stared at Draco.

"Oh my god," he finally said softly. "You... I had no idea."

"Well, no. Nobody's supposed to. But it's happening. She's moving to London and I'm staying here. And I would very much appreciate it if you didn't say anything about this at work."

"No, no of course not," Harry said quickly. He paused for a minute, then spoke up hesitantly. "What happened?"

Draco smiled ruefully. What a simple question, and how complicated the answer had been to figure out.

"Did you know Muggles have this expression, 'men always marry their mothers'?" He shook his head. "First time I heard it, I thought, well, that explains a great deal of why the Muggle world is such a mess."

Harry chuckled. "And ours isn't?"

"Good point," Draco admitted. "Anyway, I thought it meant something, you know, rather disgusting, but no, they just believe that men often end up marrying women who remind them of their mother. Happens in our world too, obviously. Very common. Just not very smart, when your mother was Narcissa Malfoy."

"Y'know, I wondered about that. She's quite pretty, but every time I saw Jessica she looked... erm..."

"Like Shetland had a noxious odour that no amount of freshening charms could get rid of?"

"A bit, yeah," Harry chuckled. "I take it she didn't like Shetland, then."

"'Didn't like' doesn't do it justice. She's about as fond of Shetland as you were of Dolores Umbridge."

Harry frowned. "But you're only here for two more years."

"It's not just Shetland."

"What is it, then?"

"She... she wanted to marry the Malfoy heir. Live in the old purebred wizarding society the way it used to be before the war. I thought I did too, but..." he trailed off. It felt strange, saying this out loud, when he'd only really thought it to himself. Such a huge revelation, that had taken so long to be understood and accepted, and shaken his world and destroyed his marriage. And it could be expressed in so very few simple words. "I've no use for it any more. Even if I did, what's left of that world after the war doesn't have anything I want. I'm fine here. I like being a Healer, and I don't particularly want to try to re-create something that has no meaning any more."

"I see."

"So she's divorcing me. She's going back to London, then probably flitting off to the continent. She has connections in Marseilles; I'm sure she'll find some nice young heir over there and get what she wants out of life."

Draco firmly ignored the pity on Harry's face as he ended the Trust Spell and checked his aura, then grimaced in annoyance. "What a surprise, that helped a good deal."

"Why did you get married to her, anyway?" Harry asked curiously, as if Draco hadn't spoken.

Draco pressed his lips together as he started to write. "Why does anybody get married? Seemed the right thing to do at the time. We just realized too late that we really weren't looking for the same things out of life at all."

"When did you meet her?"

"The year before I went into Healer School."

"Didn't that give her a bit of a hint that maybe you weren't interested in the same things? I can't imagine too many Malfoys have gone into Healing."

"Oh no, she encouraged me to do that."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, it was Healer School or a Potions Master apprenticeship. Or doing nothing, but Jessica didn't want that any more than I did. I mean, I didn't have to work for a living, but I didn't want to just sit and spend what was left of my family's money. That wasn't going to get me accepted anywhere other than among other people who were doing the same thing. And they were rather... pathetic, really. All of these people, who used to have so much power and wealth, but now... far, far less wealth, and almost no power at all. Sitting around, still trying to pretend nothing had changed."

"Sounds depressing."

"It is. Neither of us wanted that, so we both decided to do something with our lives. She's an artist; rather highly regarded. I was leaning towards Potions Master, but she pointed out that if I did that, there would still be some doubt about me. Potions Masters may be highly respected, but even if I did nothing but make medical or cheering potions, there would probably still be rumours that I was making illegal potions on the side, or doing some kind of Dark magic. With Healing, that was far less likely. It's doing something for the public good, and it's difficult, and it's far less likely to result in anybody being suspicious of me."

"Is that why you went into it?"

"It's sound logic. I went into Healing and everything seemed to be working out relatively well." He sighed. "The problem is that we wanted different things from it. She was happy to come to Shetland for my training, at first. Said it would make my 'social rehabilitation' even more credible if I did a difficult apprenticeship in the middle of nowhere. Nobody could accuse me of partying in London and scraping through just by getting lost in the St. Mungo's shuffle."

"What changed her mind?"

"She started talking about our triumphant return to London, and I realized I didn't want to go back. I like it here."

"Really?"

"Really. It's small and dull sometimes, but it's still much better than London. I don't want to go back to the parties and Ministry functions and lord it over the poor sods who are still under suspicion and falling farther out of relevance every year. I don't even want to lord it over the new people in power who thought they were finally done with the Malfoys." He shrugged. "She does."

"Wow."

"So. She's off in London, getting ready to move back there. We're selling the house in Lerwick and I'm moving at the end of the month."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"Sounds very... civilized. I thought divorces were a bit more dramatic."

"Tell me you can picture Jessica getting dramatic."

"Point. Where are you moving to?"

"Clett Head. I found an old house that's been abandoned since Gridenwald, but it's still a beautiful place. Almost no Muggles to be seen. If I ever get tired of it, I'll probably go back to Malfoy Manor, but for now, I'm happy to let that sit empty."

Harry shook his head. "I never would've pegged you to be the type to settle in Shetland."

"No, I wouldn't have either."

"Clett Head. There's some beautiful land out there. You can just go out there and breathe fresh air. It's so quiet you can hear yourself think. I was looking out there before I found my place at Benbridge."

Draco blinked, surprised. "That's on Papa Stour island, near what the Muggles call Kirstan's Hole, isn't it?" Harry nodded. "I've been there. Didn't see your house."

"No, it's Unplottable. I've always lived in Unplottable land."

"Ah. I'll probably make mine Unplottable too, once I've moved in."

Harry nodded. "Shetland's a beautiful place. Jessica doesn't know what she's missing."

"No. I don't much feel like telling her, either."

"Did you try?"

"Not very hard," Draco admitted.

"I love it here." Harry smiled as he spoke, and a dreamy, faraway expression crept over his face. Draco felt his heart give a little lurch. "And I love my place. It's _mine_. It's not somebody else's family home, or something I inherited from my parents or from Sirius, or a school where I'm only allowed to stay as long as I'm a teacher or a student. It's a place I made my own. It feels like putting down roots. My roots, nobody else's." He breathed deeply. "Feels clean."

Draco swallowed hard and looked down. Fuck. When did Harry get eloquent and thoughtful? When did he gain a link to Draco's mind and heart that let him say out loud what Draco only thought to himself?

He made himself smile at Harry and stand up. "It's almost dinner time. D'you want me to make it?"

"Oh, I already made sandwiches, I'll bring them out. And speaking of my place, I should go back to check on my plant-watering spell. D'you want to come with me? I'll show you around my land."

No. No, _very_ bad idea. Watching Harry talk about his home was excruciating enough. Actually going there would be the height of stupidity.

"I'd love to," he said.

**oooooo**

**Monday**

Harry wandered into the kitchen sleepy-eyed.

"You're up. How long have you been up?" he said fuzzily.

"A while," Draco said into his coffee cup.

"Mm. Why?"

"Forgot _Nox Fabrico_ last night."

"Myeah, I hate that." Harry yawned. "Dunno how Muggles do it, sleeping through when it's always bright out. D'you want more coffee?"

"No thanks."

If only it was just the daylight that had woken him up, Draco thought as Harry puttered about getting himself breakfast. He was getting used to Shetland's endless summer days, and could usually just set the spell and go back to sleep. This morning, though...

He couldn't get Harry out of his mind. Thinking about his expression as he showed Draco around his land. The peaceful, contented smile, the brightness of his eyes. Thinking of how much he had ached to touch Harry, tell him how he felt, hear Harry tell him he felt the same way. Feeling so strongly drawn to him, and so painfully aware that Harry didn't feel the same way. Unless he was a bloody fantastic actor, which he wasn't; not when it came to romance, anyway. Draco had seen, back at school, what Harry looked like when he was attracted to somebody; the way his eyes lit up, the way he smiled. He couldn't hide it back then, and Draco doubted very much that he could hide it now.

And there was no hint of any of that in his eyes or face or body language with regard to Draco.

"Owl from St. Mungo's came in," Draco said quietly when Harry came back to the kitchen table. "They're doing everything I said for their patients, and it's working. Two of their patients are totally cured. And they said there's one thing that worked in both of their cases."

"What's that?"

"You know they switched to using one relative or close friend as Trust Spell caster for each patient, right? Well they got the Trust Spell casters to... never mind, it's technical and rather difficult to explain anyway." He sighed. "Let's just say they made it clear what I'd have to do in order to get us the hell out of here. And..." he trailed off. Cleared his throat. "I don't know if I can."

"And if you can't?"

"Your aura's pretty close to normal. The purple's nearly all gone and the pulsing has gone down drastically. Even if I don't do anything else, probably all that would happen is the staff at the clinic would just be very suspicious of you. And some patients might not want you treating them. But it's a potion; give it another two or three months and it'll probably wear off on its own."

"Two or three months. That's not terribly appealing."

"No. It's also likely that during that time, things might happen that would damage your relationship with the people you work with and treat, even after the potion's worn off. The Healers said if you can, you should take those months off."

Harry grimaced. "Wonderful. It's a good thing I don't need to work for a living either, but this is not when I wanted to take my holidays." He slumped back on his chair, hands clasped loosely around his coffee cup. "That's wonderful. I probably shouldn't go visit Hermione or Ginny or the twins either, should I?"

"I wouldn't recommend it. I also wouldn't recommend being around other wizards unless you absolutely have to."

"Wonderful. A two or three month vacation, when I least want it, by myself. Lovely." Harry pushed his chair back with a scrape, and went to the window.

Draco stared into his coffee, idly stirring it, wondering if he'd be able to see anything but the random play of light on the surface of the liquid if he'd taken Divination way back in school. Trying to avoid looking at Harry as he stood at the window, gazing at the rocky beach outside, the serenity he'd shown last night in his home replaced by resentment and resignation.

It wouldn't be that bad, Draco reminded himself wearily. Two or three months of solitude. That's all Harry would have to endure. Possibly less, if he went to St. Mungo's and they worked on him some more. Granted, the Healers had said that starting Draco's spells over with another caster didn't seem to help, but they didn't know why that was. If they did figure it out, maybe Harry could get Hermione Granger or Ginny Weasley or somebody to help him out of this.

And even if he didn't, this wasn't a tragedy. So he'd spend two or three months lonely and cut off from the wizarding world. He could go live in the Muggle world. He might hate it, but it wouldn't kill him. And Draco had done enough for him; he certainly didn't need to risk any more embarrassment just to spare Harry a bit of unpleasantness.

_I'm sure ye can understand that there were many people who doubted that someone with your... background and history would ever be able to put the needs of a patient ahead of his own_, Helga had said.

"I can try to get rid of it before that," he said slowly.

"How?"

"They said this has to be cleared by a big confession, something that really hurts to say."

"The problem is _what_," Harry said ruefully. "You've already told me a lot more than you've told most other people. Painful things, things you didn't want me to know... I mean just how many secrets can you possibly have?"

Draco gave him a wry smile. "You do recall a little something about being a follower of the Dark – of Voldemort, right?"

Harry blanched a bit. "Draco, that's... we have to work together, if there's anything from your days as a Death Eater that I don't know, I don't think I _want_ to know-"

"No, I'm joking. Trying to, anyway," Draco said heavily. "There's nothing there that you don't already know."

"Good. Because that would be awkward. Not to mention I'm still under Ministry oath to reveal anything I hear about Voldemort or his followers."

"Yeah, I know. And my pardon was only for what I admitted to, not a free ride for everything I did. Don't worry, I don't have any more secrets there."

"Good."

Draco paused, delaying the moment. "If it weren't for the Ministry oath, would you still not want to know?"

"Not really, no. I'm done with all of that. Besides, we're colleagues. It would make things unbelievably difficult, I would think."

"Yeah, it would."

"So we're back to square one, unless you've got something awkward to tell me about your relationship with your vegetable garden. There's nothing else that-"

"Yes, there is."

"What?"

Draco took a deep breath, fixing his gaze on the floor. "I had a reason for not wanting to come here with you. It wasn't just that I didn't want to share very personal things with you, because remember, when we first got here we didn't know that would be the only cure." He paused.

"So why didn't you want to?"

Draco steeled himself and moved his wand. "_Confidotuom_. I didn't want to because... because I'm attracted to you."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"I'm attracted to you," Draco repeated, keeping his face averted and his voice flat and expressionless through sheer force of will. "I have been, for a while. It's why I didn't particularly want to take on this assignment; I thought it might make things hellishly awkward and I didn't need that at work. Home life has been bad enough in that respect; I did not need a stupid... _crush_ on a co-worker to make the clinic damned uncomfortable too."

Harry made a sound in his throat and put his elbows on the table, leaning forward, and Draco could imagine what his face looked like right now, intent and serious and still somewhat shocked. He didn't raise his gaze from the table as he forced himself to continue. In for a Sickle, in for a Knut. There was no way he could do any more of these confessions if this one didn't finally clear Harry's aura.

"Besides, it's not just... it's not just a crush, which was bad enough. I think I've fallen in love with you. You – I hated you so much in school. And I resented you when you basically saved my arse by testifying on my behalf during the war. I never expected to see you after that, but then... here you were. And you've been decent to me, and you're... you're nothing like what you were at school. And... well, you're very fit, I'm sure you know that."

Harry took a breath to speak and Draco put up a hand. "Don't – don't, I just want to get this over with, all right?" He took another deep breath. "I can talk to you about things I don't talk to anybody else about. I know you feel the same way about a lot of things that are important to me. I haven't – ever since the war, I've been pretty much alone. Most of my friends either died or went to prison, and the few that didn't, hate me for turning on them. I thought Jessica... but she's the kind of girl I would've liked before all of that."

"Draco-"

"You're the only person I've got anything in common with at the clinic, and you're... pretty much everything I want in my life. So I've been slowly falling in love with you for almost a year, and this week hasn't made things any easier." He picked up his wand, still avoiding Harry's gaze, and ended the spell.

"Wait," Harry said quickly. "You're – you can't just drop this on me and then-"

"Hang on, let me see-"

"Wait, stop that," Harry said, batting away Draco's wand.

"Look, I don't particularly want to discuss this, right? The confession is made, I need to check its effect."

Harry sat back, quietly allowing Draco to examine his aura. Draco frowned.

"Did it work?"

"Quiet." Draco narrowed his eyes, glancing down at his notes from previous confessions and from St. Mungo's.

"It didn't work, did it?"

"I said be quiet," Draco snapped impatiently.

"Maybe it wasn't the truth?"

Draco smiled grimly. "Believe me, none of that was anything I'd be likely to say just for amusement." He sat back, finally forced himself to meet Harry's gaze.

"I think it worked. Do you feel up to taking a walk through the Floo?"

Harry hesitated. "Are you sure? I don't particularly want to go through what happened last time-"

"The other day there was still something wrong with your aura. There isn't now. There's nothing there."

Harry stared at him, his expression difficult to read. Finally he stood and they both stepped through the Floo.

"Oh, hello – Harry!" Pepper did a double take as she registered the fact that Harry was right in front of her and she wasn't cringing. "Harry! You're – oh my god! Brian! Gwen!" she turned and shouted. "Draco did it!"

There was a quick scraping of chairs from the next room and hurried footsteps and the rest of the staff burst into the Floo room, all talking over one another.

"Oh my god, congratulations!" Pepper and Gwen hugged both of them and Brian slapped Draco on the back while Helga beamed at them all, and a general jumping around celebration began. The one patient in the clinic peered at them curiously and asked Gwen something in Shetlandic that included the word 'Potter,' and from Gwen's happy babble Draco gathered that she was explaining. The old witch gave Draco a wide, toothless smile.

"God we've got to go out and – it's closing time anyway, let's go to the pub in Waddersta," Brian said enthusiastically. "Draco, free round on me!"

"What finally did it?" asked Helga.

"Trust spell," Draco said shortly.

"Did they no try that at St. Mungo's? I thought it didn't work," said Pepper.

"Had to use a slightly different spell, different personal dynamics. Different confessions."

"Huh," said Pepper.

"Ooh, different confessions? So what did he tell ye?" Gwen asked Harry.

"That's private," Harry said quickly.

"Och, Merlin, ye canna leave it at that," Pepper laughed, then seemed to take in their hesitancy. "Oh all right, never mind, I probably don't want to know. Ye wear plaid knickers, is it?"

Draco forced himself to give a small laugh and shook his head, heading back to the Floo.

"Wait–" Harry stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Aren't you going to stay and celebrate?"

"No, I'm going to write it up. Let the St. Mungo crew know what's happened."

"Come on lad, this is your moment!" said Helga. "You're a Trainee and ye helped St. Mungo's beat a bloody Death Eater poison!"

"No, it's all right. You go on ahead. I might join you later," he said, and stepped back into the Floo.

**oooooo**

**Tuesday**

Draco sighed wearily as he finished arranging three dozen vials of skin-ailment potions on the counter in the potions storage room, his textbook open, studying for his next examination. He and Harry had ended up having to Floo to St. Mungo's the day before, where Harry had been examined and formally cleared and Draco had shared with the other Healers the details of what he had done. Not the way he wanted to spend his time, when he still had another bloody exam in five days.

The blue vial had a spot-removing potion, he remembered, which would've been fascinating to study at Hogwarts; not so much right now. Not a lot of teenagers in Shetland; most of them were at Hogwarts most of the year. Rather a lot of sheep, though. Draco made a mental note to pay particular attention to sheep-related skin ailments as he tried to focus on the vials and clear his mind of extraneous thoughts.

'Extraneous thoughts'. What a nice euphemism. He pressed his lips together, pushing away thoughts of Harry, grimly reminding himself that there would be plenty of time to deal with him tomorrow, when they'd both be working together here again.

Hopefully things wouldn't be too awkward. He could be a professional about this situation, and surely Harry could be too. It would just be hellishly uncomfortable, but he'd get through it. He'd already dealt with it a bit yesterday, handling Harry's attempt to talk to him with equilibrium when Harry had cornered him in between his examinations and Draco's debriefing with the other Healers.

"I need to talk to you," Harry had said, drawing him into a small alcove.

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to say thanks. For... for everything."

"No problem," Draco had said tightly. "Just doing my job."

"No, you... you went above and beyond for me. You could've just let me get shipped here in the first place. They probably would've figured it out eventually."

Draco shrugged uncomfortably and there was an awkward silence.

"You could say you're welcome, you know."

"You're welcome," Draco said stiffly.

"And I... I'm sorry-"

"Don't worry about it," Draco had said. "I can't stay, I have to debrief with the other Healers." And he had escaped to the relative safety of the Healer's meeting, where he wouldn't have to try so damn hard to not show how vulnerable he felt in Harry's presence, and how much he was already mourning the end of the easy camaraderie they'd slipped into at the quarantine house. Where he wouldn't have to think about how hollow he felt. How empty.

The orange vial held an antidote to a lot of burns caused by potions ingredients, Draco thought. Except for doxy venom, powdered dragon skin, and dried nundu tongue. He checked the text, blowing out his breath with impatience as he realized he'd forgotten shrake spines. Closed his eyes and started to repeat the list to himself five times. Bit back a curse as he heard a soft cough at the door.

"Yes?" he said, and his stomach did an unpleasant flip as he saw Harry at the door. "What are you doing here? You're not on shift till tomorrow."

"Neither are you," Harry pointed out. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Harry, it's really not necessary-"

"It is." Harry stepped into the room and closed the door behind them, looking nervous but determined. "I, erm. I never gave you my confession back, at the end."

"It's all right, I didn't expect you to-"

"I know. But I want to anyway." Harry came closer, hitched himself up onto the counter next to Draco and sat, swinging his feet slightly, seeming to brace himself. "I've been thinking about what you said, all day. And." He swallowed hard. "I can't say I feel the same. You're a colleague. It's never occurred to me to think of you as anything else."

Draco spared a moment's thanks for the forethought that had made him turn away and start sorting potions as soon as Harry had started to talk. Firmly quashed down the part of him that felt devastated, despite all his efforts to keep himself grounded in reality on this topic. "No, I didn't expect you to," he said, his voice sounding hollow even to himself.

"Not to mention I thought you were married."

"Well, I am."

"Yeah, but..." Harry swallowed again. "I _was_ attracted to you once. A long time ago."

Draco quickly grabbed for the vial that had just slipped out of his hand, catching it right before it rolled off the counter. "What?"

"Back in fifth year. I hated you more than I'd ever hated anybody before in my life, but I still - remember when I said I'd fancied another bloke in fifth year, and it was really embarrassing? That was you."

Draco firmly put the vial back in place and turned around. "Fifth year was the year I was on the Inquisitorial Squad."

"I know," Harry said sourly. "You've no idea how unpleasant you were. But you were... you were very attractive. You still are," he said, and a blush spread across his face.

"Erm. Right. Thanks," Draco said, also blushing deeply. "It's... erm, nice of you to say so," he said inanely, and wished the floor would swallow him up. Quickly headed off that thought – it had been known to happen that wizards and witches in great distress sometimes caused the floor to literally open up and swallow them, and the damage was hell to repair. Rather mortifying, too.

"Right. Well, thanks. That's... nice to know." He cleared his throat and picked up a vial again.

"No, I'm not done," Harry said, putting out a hand and taking the vial from his. "Like I said, I was attracted. Once."

"But you're not any more."

"Were you attracted to me, back then?"

"No, of course not."

"So, things can change," Harry said, giving him a small nervous smile.

Draco looked at him seriously. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I got to know you this last week. I mean, I knew you already, I knew you'd changed since Hogwarts, but I didn't know just how much. And," he pushed his glasses up awkwardly. "And I was thinking it was nice to finally have a friend in this place. I was thinking I've been alone for a long time, because Hermione and Ron and Ginny all have their own lives and I don't fit there any more, and I – I _like_ being alone, but so do you, and it might be nice to get together outside of work in a way I can't get together with Brian or Pepper or Gwen or Helga because they have families and they're about a million years older than I am..." Harry paused as he seemed to run out of breath.

"And?"

"And... and if you'd like to...I mean, I'd still like that"

"Like what?"

"I..." Harry rubbed his hand over his hair nervously. "Look, I'm not good at this, right? I was rubbish at this back at school, and I haven't gotten much better, believe it or not." He took a deep breath. "I'm just saying I might... if you want... we could maybe go out for drinks. I was thinking we could, just as mates, but... erm... if you wanted to, as... erm..." he flushed and trailed off.

Draco narrowed his eyes. "Are you... asking me out on a date?" he said cautiously.

"Erm. I suppose so."

Draco felt an unexpected laugh bubbling up inside. "You're... you're asking your married colleague, who just treated you as a patient, out on a date?"

Harry chuckled. "When you put it like that it sounds a little sordid, doesn't it?"

"A little." Draco suddenly realized that Harry was smiling at him, his grin growing wider, and realized with shock that he was smiling too. "You know, Muggles believe you should never date your patients."

"_Muggles_ don't even know how to make light without a working light bulb."

"Good point."

"So are you saying yes?"

"Oh. Oh, right, of course," Draco said quickly. "Yeah, that would... that would be good."

Harry grinned, slipped off the counter, and hesitantly moved closer to Draco.

"Erm... do you mind?" he asked, slowly putting a hand out and taking Draco's hand in his.

"I'msorrywhat?" Draco blinked and cursed himself for an incoherent idiot, and cleared his throat. "Mind? No, go ahead." Warm. Harry's hand was warm, and dry, and he had small calluses, probably from a broom handle.

"'Sfunny, I wanted to do this so much in school," Harry said, bemused, and Draco reminded himself to breathe. "Two bloody years – off and on – I wanted you, and I hated you for it. D'you know Ron and Hermione used to say I was obsessed with you? 'Course, we all thought it was because I hated you so much."

"I take it they never knew there was anything more to it than that."

"Actually I told Hermione a few years ago, when Fred Weasley came out to his parents. I said something like, I didn't know what my parents would've thought if I'd come out to them, and we ended up talking about a lot of things. I'd almost forgotten about it, by that point."

Draco nodded, having a little difficulty following Harry's words with the distraction of Harry's hand warm in his, Harry's thumb slowly rubbing a small circle on the back of Draco's hand.

"I'm remembering it now, though," Harry said, his voice pitched low.

"Yeah?" Draco said, and damn, he was breathless, but it didn't matter at all.

"Yeah. You're still rather fit. Only now you don't cover it up by being an obnoxious git."

Draco started to laugh, the tension easing a bit.

"I'm remembering a lot, Draco," Harry said. "I remember I wanted to touch you – mostly to hit you, I'll admit, but sometimes I also wanted to..." Harry touched Draco's face, then drew him closer, and Draco fleetingly wondered if there was time for him to attempt Marcus Flint's charm wandlessly before Harry realized that he was rather excited about all of this.

Harry cleared his throat nervously. "Can I?" he said, looking down at Draco's lips.

"Oh. Yeah, sure," Draco said, his voice coming out as a whisper, and Harry gave him a gentle kiss that did nothing to stop Draco's trembling.

"Mm. That's nice," Harry murmured, and leaned in for another one, and Draco felt something break free inside him as he reached up and carefully drew Harry closer, part of him still not quite believing he wouldn't wake up any moment now, and the rest of him not caring, as long as he could kiss Harry back.

"This could work out better than going out to a pub," Harry said with a smile, and their lips met again.

Oh... that was so very, very good... Draco firmly quashed the urge to whimper but gave up trying to keep his breathing steady or dampen down his arousal. Harry was a mediwizard, just as well-versed as Draco in the ways of human bodies, and from what Draco knew of him, not terribly prudish anyway. He allowed Harry to bring them closer, smiling into Harry's lips as their bodies came into full contact and he sensed Harry's arousal as well.

"Erm, yeah, that's – I've been thinking a lot since yesterday," Harry said a little sheepishly. "I mean I didn't know if, you know, you'd want to even if I did, what with still being married and-"

"Harry," Draco stopped his words with a kiss. "Stop talking," he pulled away long enough to say, then came back to Harry's mouth.

"OK," Harry sighed and moved his lips to Draco's cheek, making his way to his ear. "Why didn't you say anything sooner? What," he bit Draco's earlobe gently and Draco closed his eyes, "did you think I would do? Run screaming?"

"You're," Draco drew in his breath sharply as Harry moved down to his neck, "straight. I thought. And we work together. And," he moaned, god Harry was good at that, "you never seemed to like me in school."

"We're not at school any more."

"We also work together," Draco repeated breathlessly.

"And this is a problem because...?"

"Office romances-"

"We live in Shetland. You could fit the entire wizarding population into the Great Hall and still have room for a troll or two." He broke off and Draco lost the plot a bit as Harry nibbled his earlobe. "D'you really think anybody's going to disapprove of any two people dating, if they're lucky enough to find someone they like here?" He chuckled. "You haven't lived in Shetland long enough, mate," he said, and captured Draco's lips with his own again.

"And what - mm - what if this doesn't work out?"

"Cross that bridge if we get to it," Harry said, and pressed himself against Draco.

"Right," Draco gasped. "You're very persuasive." Draco gasped as a hand stole down and touched his waist, slowing down, almost as if asking for permission.

"Can I...?"

_I've tossed off to the thought of you going down on me more times that I can count in the last few days_, Draco wanted to say. _I think I'm all right with your hand on my arse_. He settled for simply nodding.

"Hang on," Harry hurriedly waved his hand towards the potions storage room door and it swung shut, the lock clicking.

"Impressive."

"Just in case you're about to slap my face if I, erm..." Harry slowly started to move his hand to the front of Draco's trousers until Draco, impatient, grabbed it and placed it right where it would do the most good.

"Does that – oh – answer your question?"

"Excellent. Oh!" Harry sucked his breath in as Draco's hand found its way to the front of his own trousers. "God! Don't stop!" he hissed.

Draco swallowed hard. "Erm, don't do the Parseltongue thing," he said hurriedly.

"I – I wasn't," Harry said, pulling back a bit, his voice a tad annoyed. "I thought you said you didn't have a problem with-"

"Erm, I don't, it just... erm. It's a bit more arousing than I'd like, all right?"

Harry's eyes widened slightly. "You're... joking." He seemed taken aback. "It's – you find that hot?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," he said, seeking out Harry's lips again.

"You're joking," Harry said, breaking off their kiss with an amused smirk. "I'll have to keep that in mind."

"Not at work, please," said Draco hurriedly, and grasped him more firmly through his trousers.

Harry gasped. "God, that's-" he groaned and buried his head on Draco's shoulder, resumed his own stroking movements, then put a finger in the waistband of Draco's trousers and waited a half-second for Draco to nod enthusiastically before slipping a hand inside.

This was going to kill him, thought Draco vaguely. After so bloody long with no better company than his right hand and fantasies of people who very definitely did not remind him of Harry, followed by fantasies that very vividly _did_ remind him of Harry, and the roller-coaster of emotions he'd gone through in the last few days – hell, in the last few minutes – this was going to do him in.

What a perfect way to go, though. He groaned as Harry caressed his aching erection, closed his eyes in delight as Harry responded to Draco's own movements eagerly and bit down on his lip, and by god he was about to come blindingly hard in the potions storage room at the clinic and this was probably neither the time or place for this kind of thing but he wouldn't have wanted to stop it for all the-

The door rattled.

He and Harry froze, Draco suppressing a vehement curse and both of them pulling back slightly, staring at the door handle.

"Bloody hell," Gwen's voice muttered, and Draco barely had time to realize that she was most probably taking out her wand to open the door when Harry spoke.

"Gwen, don't open the door!" he said, his voice steady despite the fact that he was panting and flushed.

"Harry? Why's it locked? Ye all right lad?"

"We're all right, just spilled some, erm, asafoetida," said Harry quickly, grabbing a vial and upending it. "We're just trying to clean it up!"

"Ugh. Who's we? Is Draco in there?"

"Yeah, we'll be out in a minute!" called out Draco, his eyes starting to water as the foul stuff wafted through the small room.

"Take your time," said Gwen. "Don't want that smelling up the whole clinic." Her footsteps receded down the hall.

"Ugh, that's quite-" Draco began, and Harry chuckled.

"Foul, isn't it? Here," he flicked his wand and muttered a spell and the noxious odour seemed to clear itself miraculously.

Draco took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair, then laughed.

"What?"

"All right, that probably wasn't the most professional thing I've ever done, but what a way for it to stop."

Harry pulled him back into his arms. "I know," he said with a kiss. "We'll have time enough to continue this later, though." He gently pushed Draco away and they both straightened up. "Tonight? Dinner in Brae?"

Draco grinned at Harry's eager, shy expression, the flush on his cheeks and lips, the brightness of his eyes.

_I did that_, he thought, a little floored. And: _Miserable Anonymous Death Eaters who brewed that foul potion? Thank you, from the bottom of my heart_.

"I'd love to," he said.

**oooooo**

**End**

**oooooo**

**Author's Note 1:** OK, so, like I said, this was written for a fic exchange. This was my exchangee's wishlist:

I particularly enjoy fics featuring a plausibly smitten! and pining! Draco who resents the fact that he is smitten and yet pines anyway. Clueless! Harry works well with this Draco, but then so does an equally smitten! and pining! Harry who thinks he'd never have a chance. I think I'd like a post-Hogwarts, maybe with one or both of them as aurors? Or working together in some capacity? One working as a healer and the other under treatment has a lot of potential too. And then there's the scenario where they're both living together under the same roof for one reason or another--one under the protection of the other, in hiding together, one just down on his luck, etc. Lots of room for UST (that becomes RST) in all of those scenarios. Kinks include wank, frottage, angsty confessions, and sometimes parseltongue, but they're certainly not necessary for an excellent story, and I'm not looking for a PWP. The plot is my favorite part. :) Don't feel that you need to work anything in that doesn't fit in with the mood of the story.

I got to thinking, although "angsty confessions" are sometimes great, many of my favorite fics don't feature them. Or they feature angst combined with unintentional confessions. Or post-angst confessions. I think what I was going for was...emotional vulnerability.

**What rating would you prefer?** PG-PG13

**Author's Note 2:** The places linked to in Part II of the story are:

Draco and Jessica's house, Lerwick Midgard Cresc (10) S

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / II -1LerwickMidgardCresc10S . jpg

View from Draco's new home, Whalsay - Clett Head S

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / II - 2Whalsay - ClettHeadS . jpg

View near Harry's home, Papa Stour Island, Kirstan's Hole E

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / II -3PapaStourKirstansHoleE . jpg

Pub in Pub, Wadddersta N

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / II - 4WaddderstaN . jpg

I've also got a larger map of Shetland with all the locations mentioned in the story highlighted, for the truly obsessed among us. Unfortunately, photobucket doesn't let me show it full size, so if you want to be able to read the map, you pretty much have to download it.

i9 . photobucket . com / albums / a71 / AnnaFugazzi / II - 5LargeFullShetlandMap . png

No, we didn't have a Geography Club in my high school. But I would've been president if we had :)


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